Marie Dauguet: 'De nuageux accords circulent'

 

DE NUAGEUX ACCORDS CIRCULENT

 

De nuageux accords circulent

Moëlleusement et s’accumulent

Sur l’eau balbutiante et dont la face ondule.

 

Tout est vaporeux, indécis,

A peine un reflet cramoisi,

Vaguement chatoyant, aux cîmes des roseaux moisis.

 

Les lents bouleaux mal réveillés,

S’étirant au soleil mouillé,

A l’entour des marais embués,

Ont de frileux sourires

Et des chuchotis gazouillés.

 

Plus de sanglots pesants,

De hoquets mous et syncopés,

A travers les pacages trempés

Et les fossés où trembleusement s’écoulait

Un gluant brouillard violet.

 

Le Printemps, éphèbe ingénu,

Candide et nu,

Assis sur les mousses amères

Qu’un rayon d’azur clair veloure,

A la chanson qui s’enamoure

Des merles, aux tournoiements des essaims sauvages,

Vibrances d’or à travers la saulaie

D'or pur, harmonise sa double flûte,

Qu’il essaie,

Dont les volutes

Montent, se contournent et planent,

Diaphanes en l’air diaphane.

 

 

CLOUDY HARMONIES CIRCULATE

 

Cloudy harmonies circulate

Quite softly and accumulate

On babbling water where the surface undulates.

 

All is haziness, indecision,

Scarcely a blurred reflected crimson,

Shimmering vaguely in musty reed-tops’ imprecision.

 

The drowsy birch trees, half-awake,

Which line the shrouded marshy lake

In damp sun start to stretch themselves,

And skittishly they start to smile

Warbling and whispering the while.

 

No more heavy sobs are heard,

No gentle gulps that syncopate

From grasslands in their sodden state

And from the ditches, where a violet, sticky mist

Drains slowly off in turns and twists.

 

And Spring, an artless handsome youth,

Naïve and nude,

Seated on coarse, unyielding moss

That clear-blue rays lend softer gloss,

Attunes to songs that can delight

Blackbirds, to whirlings that wild swarms display in flight,

Gold vibrancies through willows’ hanging strands

Of purest gold; his aulos¹ is at hand,

His song now found –

Its curls of sound

Ascend and convolute, hang high:

Limpid scrolls in a limpid sky.

 

¹ An ancient Greek wind instrument, a double pipe played with a double reed