Poèmes anglais

Un poème sommeille en moi
Qui exprimera mon âme entière
Je le sens aussi vague que le son et le vent
Non modelé dans sa forme accomplie.

Il n'a ni stance, ni vers, ni mot.
Il n'est même pas tel que je le rêve.
Rien qu'un sentiment confus de lui,
Rien qu'une brume heureuse entourant la pensée.

Jour et nuit dans mon mystère intime
Je le rêve, je le lis, je l'épelle,
Et sa vague perfection toujours
Gravite en moi à la frange des mots.

La pensée est aveugle mais elle sait ce qu’est le regard.
Son toucher prudent qui distingue formes et contours
Suggère que la forme est cette chose dont le tact à l’affût
Vient draper l’être propre dans une errante obscurité
D’où vient dès lors, sinon de vision devinée, que le toucher
Nous apprend de lui-même qu’il n’est qu’un sens fermé et vide ?
Comment le tact, insatisfait, peut-il en s’accroissant atteindre
L’intelligence totale d’un sens plus véridique ?
Si, la chose une fois touchée, le tact se retire,
Ma mémoire conserve quelque chose de connu du réel extérieur ;
Ainsi la mémoire du toucher, qui elle-même ne touche pas, est pourvue
Du sens d’un sens qui révèle les choses lointaines.
Ainsi, grâce au tact erronément juste du non tact
La pensée tactile du voir, loin de voir les choses,
Ne voit que la vision.

Mais puisque les hommes voient plus par les yeux que par l’âme
Je clamerai dans la pierre mon immense douleur ;
Inquiet pourtant que par ta présence ils soient dévorés de désir
Je chargerai le marbre de ce regret
Qui brille dans mon cœur comme une étoile majeure.
Ainsi, même dans la pierre, notre amour sera si grand
Dans ta statue de nous, pareille au destin d’un dieu,
Essence incarnée et désincarnée de notre amour,
Que, comme une trompette traversant les mers
Et portant son éclat de continent en continent,
Notre amour mêlé à la mort dira sa joie et sa douleur
A travers les infinis et les éternités. 

I am older than Nature and her Time
By all the timeless age of Consciousness
And my adult oblivion of the clime
Where I was born makes me not countryless.
An exile's yearnings through my thoughts escape
For daylight of that land where once I dreamed,
Which I cannot recall in colour or shape
But haunts my hours like something that hath gleamed
And yet is not as light rememberèd,
Nor to the left or to the right conceived ;
And all round me tastes as if life were dead
And the world made but to be disbelieved.
Thus I my hope on unknown truth lay ; yet
How but by hope do I the unknown truth get ?
(35 sonnets)

Combien de masques et de sous-masques portons-nous
Pour voiler l’expression de notre âme Et quand
Par jeu, l’âme elle-même tombe le masque
Sait-elle si c’est l’ultime et si elle voit la face
indubitable ?
Le vrai masque ne sent pas l’intérieur du masque
Mais regarde au-delà avec des yeux masqués.
Quelle que soit la conscience qui amorce le jeu
Son exercice condamne à l’insomnie
Pareilles à l’enfant effrayé de son image en miroir
Nos âmes, qui sont des enfants livrés à la distraction,
Attribuent à d’autres leurs propres grimaces
Et créent tout un monde en oubliant qu’ils le suscitent ;
Et lorsqu’une pensée tente de faire tomber le
masque de notre âme
C’est encore masquée qu’elle s’efforce de
démasquer. 

This

They say I pretend or lie
All I write. No such thing.
It simply is that I
Feel by imagining.
I don't use the heart-string.

All that I dream or lose,
That falls short or dies on me,
Is like a terrace which looks
On another thing beyond.
It's that thing leads me on.

And so I write in the middle
Of things not next one's feet,
Free from my own muddle,
Concerned for what is not.
Feel? Let the reader feel!

I Have a Terrible Cold

I have a terrible cold,
And everyone knows how terrible colds
Alter the whole system of the universe,
Set us against life,
And make even metaphysics sneeze.
I have wasted the whole day blowing my nose.
My head is aching vaguely.
Sad condition for a minor poet!
Today I am really and truly a minor poet.
What I was in old days was a wish; it's gone.

Goodbye for ever, queen of fairies!
Your wings were made of sun, and I am walking here.
I shan't get well unless I go and lie down on my bed.
I never was well except lying down on the Universe.

Excusez un peu… What a terrible cold!… it's
physical!
I need truth and aspirin.
(14.03.1931)

I Know, I Alone

I know, I alone
How much it hurts, this heart
With no faith nor law
Nor melody nor thought.

Only I, only I
And none of this can I say
Because feeling is like the sky -
Seen, nothing in it to see.

The washwoman beats the laundry

The washwoman beats the laundry
Against the stone in the tank.
She sings because she sings and is sad
For she sings because she exists:
Thus she is also happy.

If I could do in verses
What she does with laundry,
Perhaps I would lose
My surfeit of fates.

Ah, the tremendous unity
Of beating laundry in reality,
Singing songs in whole or in part
Without any thought or reason!
But who will wash my heart?

Discontinuous Poems

The frightful reality of things
Is my everyday discovery.
Each thing is what it is.
How can I explain to anyone how much
I rejoice over this, and find it enough?

To be whole, it is enough to exist.

I have written quite a number of poems
And may write many more, of course.
Each poem of mine explains it,
Though all my poems are different,
Because each thing that exists is always proclaiming it.

Sometimes I busy myself with watching a stone,
I don't begin thinking whether it feels.
I don't force myself to call it my sister,

But I enjoy it because of its being a stone,
I enjoy it because it feels nothing,
I enjoy it because it is not at all related to me.

At times I also hear the wind blow by
And find that merely to hear the wind blow makes
it worth having been born.

I don't know what others will think who read this;
But I find it must be good because I think it
without effort,
And without the idea of others hearing me think,
Because I think it without thoughts,
Because I say it as my words say it.

Once they called me a materialist poet
And I admired myself because I never thought
That I might be called by any name at all.
I am not even a poet: I see.
If what I write has any value, it is not I who am
valuable.
The value is there, in my verses.
All this has nothing whatever to do with any will
of mine.

TRANSLATED BY EDOUARD RODITI