Louise Glück

AVRIL

Il n'est de désespoir pareil à mon désespoir -

Vous n'avez pas, dans ce jardin,
à penser de telles choses, à produire
ces gestes pénibles vers l'ailleurs ; l'homme
qui s'acharne à désherber une forêt entière,
la femme qui se met à boiter, à refuser de changer de vêtements
ou de laver ses cheveux.

Pensez-vous qu'il m'importe
que vous vous parliez ?
Je veux que vous sachiez
que j'attendais mieux de deux créatures
dotées d'un esprit : sans aller
jusqu'à prendre soin l'un de l'autre,
au moins que vous compreniez
que la peine est répartie
entre vous, parmi toute votre espèce, afin que je
puisse vous reconnaître, comme le bleu profond
marque la scille sauvage, le blanc
la violette des bois.

________________________________
APRIL

No one's despair is like my despair -

You have no place in this garden
thinking such things, producing
the tiresome outward signs ; the man
pointedly weeding an entire forest,
the woman limping, refusing to change clothes
or wash her hair.

Do you suppose I care
if you speak to one another ?
But I mean you to know
I expected better of two creatures
who were given minds : if not
that you would actually care for each other
at least that you would understand
grief is distributed
between you, among all your kind, for me
to know you, as deep blue
marks the wild scilla, white
the wood violet.

TRILLIUM
[...]
Existe-t-il des âmes qui ont autant besoin
de la présence de la mort que moi, de protection ?

____________
TRILLIUM
[...]
Are there souls that need
death's presence, as I require protection ?

CHANT DE PÉNÉLOPE
Petite âme, petite perpétuellement nue,
fait à présent comme je te le demande, monte
les branches en étages de l’épicéa ;
attends au sommet, attentive, telle
une sentinelle ou un vigile. Il sera bientôt de retour à la maison :
il t’incombe d’être
généreuse. Tu n’as pas été tout à fait
parfaite toi non plus ; avec ton corps encombrant
tu as fait des choses dont tu ne devrais pas
débattre dans des poèmes. Par conséquent,
appelle-le au loin, par-delà l’étendue de la mer, par-delà sa clarté
avec ton chant lugubre, avec ton avide
chant contre nature – passionné,
comme Maria Callas. Qui
ne voudrait pas de toi ? Quel appétit d’ogre
ne parviendrais-tu à satisfaire ? Bientôt
il reviendra de là où il va toujours,
bronzé de son séjour, à vouloir
son poulet grillé. Ah, tu dois l’accueillir,
tu dois secouer les branches de l’arbre
pour capter son attention,
mais prudemment, prudemment, il ne faudrait pas
que son beau visage soit criblé
par la chute de trop nombreuses épines.

PARABOLE DU ROI
En regardant devant lui, le grand roi
ne voyait pas le destin mais simplement
l’aube étinceler sur
l’île inconnue : en tant que roi
il pensait à l’impératif – mieux vaut
continuer à aller de l’avant
par-delà les eaux radieuses. De toute façon,
qu’est-ce que le destin sinon une stratégie pour ignorer
l’histoire, avec ses dilemmes
moraux, une façon de considérer
le présent, quand les décisions
sont prises, comme le lien
nécessaire entre le passé (des images du roi
alors jeune prince) et l’avenir glorieux (des images
de jeunes filles esclaves). Quoi qu’il
y eût devant lui, pourquoi cela devait-il être
si aveuglant ? Qui aurait pu croire
que ce n’était pas le soleil ordinaire
mais des flammes s’élevant sur un monde
sur le point de disparaître ?

I sit at the bedroom window, watching the snow fall.
The earth is like a mirror:
calm meeting calm, detachment meeting detachment.

What lives, lives underground.
What dies, dies without struggle.

The sea doesn’t change as the earth changes;
it doesn’t lie.
You ask the sea, what can you promise me
and it speaks the truth; it says erasure.

Finally the dog goes in.
We watch the crescent moon,
very faint at first, then clearer and clearer
as the night grows dark.
Soon it will be the sky of early spring, stretching above the stubborn ferns and violets.

Nothing can be forced to live.
The earth is like a drug now, like a voice from far away,
a lover or master. In the end, you do what the voice tells you.
It says forget, you forget.
It says begin again, you begin again.

It seems a strange position, being very young.
They have this thing everyone wants and they don’t want—
but they want to keep it anyway; it’s all they can trade on.

The children cry, they sometimes fight over toys.
But the water’s there, to remind the mothers that they love these children;
that for them to drown would be terrible.

So people flee—and for a while, away from here,
they’re exuberant, surrounded by so many choices—
But no signal from earth
will ever reach the sun. Thrash
against that fact, you are lost.
[...]
To my mind, you’re better off if you stay;
that way, dreams don’t damage you.
At dusk, you sit by the window. Wherever you live,
you can see the fields, the river, realities
on which you cannot impose yourself—

I fell asleep in a river, I woke in a river,
of my mysterious
failure to die I can tell you
nothing, neither
who saved me nor for what cause

3.
The rest I have told you already.
A few years of fluency, and then
the long silence, like the silence in the valley
before the mountains send back
your own voice changed to the voice of nature.
This silence is my companion now.
I ask: of what did my soul die?
and the silence answers
if your soul died, whose life
are you living and
when did you become that person?

When I was a child, I suffered from insomnia.
Summer nights, my parents permitted me to sit by the lake;
I took the dog for company.

Did I say “suffered”? That was my parents’ way of explaining
tastes that seemed to them
inexplicable: better “suffered” than “preferred to live with the dog.”

As one takes in
an enemy, through these windows
one takes in
the world:
here is the kitchen, here the darkened study.
Meaning: I am master here.

Winter was over. In the thawed dirt,
bits of green were showing.

Come to me, said the world. I was standing
in my wool coat at a kind of bright portal—
I can finally say
long ago; it gives me considerable pleasure. Beauty
the healer, the teacher—

death cannot harm me
more than you have harmed me,
my beloved life.

Why not? Why not? Why should my poems not imitate my life?
Whose lesson is not the apotheosis but the pattern, whose meaning
is not in the gesture but in the inertia, the reverie.
[...]
Balm of the summer night, balm of the ordinary,
imperial joy and sorrow of human existence,
the dreamed as well as the lived—
what could be dearer than this, given the closeness of death?

I was here
I was here

There was one summer returning over and over
there was one dawn
I grew old watching

I had a philosophy of love, a philosophy
of religion, both based on
early experience within a family.

And if when I wrote I used only a few words
it was because time always seemed to me short
as though it could be stripped away
at any moment.

And my story, in any case, wasn’t unique
though, like everyone else, I had a story,
a point of view.

A few words were all I needed:
nourish, sustain, attack.

EROS
I had drawn my chair to the hotel window, to watch the rain.

I was in a kind of dream or trance—
in love, and yet
I wanted nothing.

It seemed unnecessary to touch you, to see you again.
I wanted only this:
the room, the chair, the sound of the rain falling,
hour after hour, in the warmth of the spring night.

I needed nothing more; I was utterly sated.
My heart had become small; it took very little to fill it.
I watched the rain falling in heavy sheets over the darkened city—

You were not concerned; I could let you
live as you needed to live.

At dawn the rain abated. I did the things
one does in daylight, I acquitted myself,
but I moved like a sleepwalker.

It was enough and it no longer involved you.
A few days in a strange city.
A conversation, the touch of a hand.
And afterward, I took off my wedding ring.

That was what I wanted: to be naked.

Finally, in middle age,
I was tempted to return to childhood.

ARBORETUM
We had the problem of age, the problem of wishing to linger.
Not needing, anymore, even to make a contribution.
Merely wishing to linger: to be, to be here.

And to stare at things, but with no real avidity.
To browse, to purchase nothing.
But there were many of us; we took up time. We crowded out
our own children, and the children of friends. We did great damage,
meaning no harm.

We continued to plan; to fix things as they broke.
To repair, to improve. We traveled, we put in gardens.
And we continued brazenly to plant trees and perennials.

We asked so little of the world. We understood
the offense of advice, of holding forth. We checked ourselves:
we were correct, we were silent.
But we could not cure ourselves of desire, not completely.
Our hands, folded, reeked of it.

How did we do so much damage, merely sitting and watching,
strolling, on fine days, the grounds of the park, the arboretum,
or sitting on benches in front of the public library,
feeding pigeons out of a paper bag?

We were correct, and yet desire pursued us.
Like a great force, a god. And the young
were offended; their hearts
turned cold in reaction. We asked

so little of the world; small things seemed to us
immense wealth. Merely to smell once more the early roses
in the arboretum: we asked
so little, and we claimed nothing. And the young
withered nevertheless.

Or they became like stones in the arboretum: as though
our continued existence, our asking so little for so many years, meant
we asked everything.