Marie Dauguet: 'Dédicace' (Dedication to 'Par l'Amour', 1904)

 

Dédicace

 

Pour Henri

 

Je porte en moi, parmi des clartés de vitrail,

Des fleuves étalés, des cités fulgurantes,

Des bouleaux d’argent pur, des prés de frais émail,

Des jardins constellés de lys et d’amaranthes.

 

Je nourris des dragons en de lointains bercails;

Mais rien ne transparaît du rêve qui me hante;

Je suis ce manuscrit fleuri d’absurdes plantes

Qui recèle à l’abri de mon double fermail,

 

- Magique parchemin et dont la garde est vierge,

Que nul doigt n’effleura sous sa gaine de serge, -

Des psaumes exaltés et d’amoureux cantiques.

 

A toi, j’offre aujourd’hui les cités, les chimères,

Le vitrail d’or liquide et le livre mystique

Où repose mon cœur comme en un reliquaire.

 

 

Dedication

 

To Henri

 

I carry deep within, midst stained-glass clarities,

Expanses of great rivers, cities’ dazzling glare,

Tall birches of pure silver, fresh-enamel leas,

Gardens bestrewn with light, amaranths everywhere.

 

I nourish dragons in high mountain folds’ safe grasp,

But nothing filters through of my dream’s haunting trance;

I am this manuscript that flowers with weird plants

Concealed within the shelter of my double clasp —

 

A magic parchment to a virgin guard consigned,

beneath whose strong serge scabbard fingers could not roam —

Amorous canticles and hymns with holy themes.

 

To you I offer now the cities, fictive dreams,

The liquid-gold stained glass, as too the mystic tome

In which my heart now lies as in a sacred shrine.

 

Esther Jansma: 'Waarom we hier zijn'

Why we are here

 

Most illogical about just stuff is movement, opening

leaves, the body anchored in the earth without any

prospect of relocating, turning with the sun,

getting free from the soil, falling out of an embrace,

without realising you are alive but quivering with will

making tracks, running to the end of hunger.

 

For this is what happened: We stood nailed to the ground

when the walls disintegrated, the decay began, turned

our faces to the sun, waiting in queues for water

until the first ones died. Weeping, the neighbours left.

I did not want to leave the spot where the children lay.

You said: life is being able to move, you’re not some thing.

 

François Villon: Quatrain (Je suis Francoys...)

 

Quatrain

 

Je suis Francoys, dont il me poise,

Ne de Paris empres Pontoise,

Et de la corde d’une toise

Scaura mon col que mon cul poise.

 

 

Quatrain

 

The name François through life I tow,

Born near Pointoise some years ago,

Soon will a noose my neck let know

The true weight of my arse below.

A.L. Snijders: 'Fatsoen'

 

respectability

 

My father worked for MAHEZ, Machine Handel Enschede & Zonen. He would rather have become a violinist, but his cold-blooded grandfather, who he was lodging with, had smashed his violin to pieces and thrown it out the window. There was no money for a new violin, so he worked for MAHEZ. He began from the bottom and ended his career as a managing director. He did not love trade nor traders, he loved music, he used to sit every week in the Concertgebouw and at home used to listen to Mahler and Bruckner. He had a neighbour who always rang at the door if the music was on too loud. This neighbour was extremely respectable, he involved himself with everything that was unrespectable. His daughter was a pupil at Amsterdams Lyceum, so he regularly involved himself with the teaching. He made a complaint when he noticed that the French teacher had dealt with a quatrain by François Villon (born in 1431). He found it improper.

 

The name François through life I tow,

Born near Pointoise some years ago,

Soon will a noose my neck let know

The true weight of my arse below.

 

The teacher was extremely fond of people who use the word improper and in the following lesson he dealt with a ballad by the same poet, in which the following lines might be able to cause offence.

 

On a soft-cushioned couch a fat priest lay.

Beside a brazier in a room well-draped

And white, attentive, tender and well-shaped

Right next to him the lady Sidoine lay,

They drank mulled hypocras, both night and day,

They laughed and played, they cuddled and they kissed,

And, naked both, enjoyed their lovers’ tryst…*

 

The teacher was not dismissed, but the shocked father probably sent his daughter to another school. I like to hear things about people who live according to their principles.

 

 

*The Dutch translation only features fragments of three lines: ‘Night and day in the feather bed/naked flesh against naked flesh, they played their amorous duet./And drank wine and feasted on fine food’. The original read: Sur mol duvet assis, un gras chanoine,/Lez un brasier, en chambre bien nattée,/A son côté gisant dame Sidoine/Blanche, tendre, polie et attintée,/Boire hypocras, à jour et à nuitée,/Rire, jouer, mignonner et baiser,/Et nu à nu, pour mieux des corps s'aiser…’

Elisabeth Eybers: Two beautiful poems 'Eerste sneeu' and 'Herinnering'

 

Eerste sneeu

 

Vyandelike bitter oostewind,

sodra ’k my veilig agter glas bevind

 

vergeef ek jou. Want kyk hoe saggies dra

jy elke aparte ragfyn donsvlok na

 

die knekelharde grond om saam te smelt

tot één groot wit weerlegging van geweld.

 

 

First snow

 

You hostile, bitter east wind, when again

I’m safe and sound behind the window pane,

 

I bear no grudge. For see how gently you

bring home each filmy, downy snowflake to

 

the bone-hard ground where all the merging white

forms one great refutation of raw might.

 

 

Herinnering

 

As kind het ’k eens die maan se ronde skyf

langsaam sien uitswel bo die silwer vlei

om saggies soos ’n seepbel weg te dryf

en tussen yl popliere in te gly. 

 

Agter my in die donker was ’n raam

vol lig en mensestemme en gelag

en ín my angs en weekheid sonder naam

terwyl ek op die maan se loskom wag. 

 

Die res is alles duister en verward…

Van tak tot tak het hy gewieg… ek weet

nog net dat die gekneusde gras se geur

soos naeltjies was en dat ek skielik seer-

gekry het van die inkrimp van my hart

en met my pols die trane weggevee’t.

 

 

Memory

 

The moon’s round disc I as a child once saw

slowly dilate above the silver vlei

then gently drift off bubble-like before

it slid midst thread-thin poplars by and by.

 

Behind me in the dark a window pane

was full of light and voices loud and gay,

in me was fear and faintness without name

while watching for the moon to break away.

 

The rest’s obscure, confused now for my part...

It swayed from branch to branch... I just persist

in sensing still the scent of new-bruised grass

was needle-sharp and too my sudden gasp

of pain at the contraction of my heart

and how I wiped the tears off with my wrist.

 

Marie Dauguet: 'Vois-tu'

 

Vois-tu...

 

Vois-tu sous la chaude ondée

De frissons d’or inondée,

S’ouvrir au matin laiteux,

Qui si tendrement bégaie,

La floraison des saulaies

Mirée à l’étang clarteux.

 

Le jour indolent se flâtre

Souplement aux troncs d’albâtre

Des trembles et des bouleaux;

Puis rôde parmi les branches

Et les touffes des pervenches

Comme un bondissant chevreau.

 

Plus des crampes tétaniques

Et plus des cris sataniques

Du brutal et sombre hiver;

Mais, sur la terre amollie,

La fraîcheur qui se déplie

À l’horizon des blés verts;

 

Mais parmi le bois qui vibre

Et résonne à pleine fibre,

Le vent fougueux entraînant

Pollens ardents, fleurs vermeilles,

Chants d’oiseaux et vols d’abeilles,

En essaim tourbillonnant.

 

Viens! Que nos lèvres se baisent

Aux sanglots que rien n’apaise

Des doux ramiers enivrés

Et que nos aveux s’accordent

Aux accents fous qui débordent

Des halliers énamourés.

 

 

Do you see?

 

Do you see beneath warm rain

Drenched in gold-shimmering train,

Turning towards milky morn,

Which stammers so tenderly,

The blooming willows stand free,

In the clear pond finely drawn?

 

The lazy day lolls at ease,

In the alabastrine trees

Of aspen and birch it sleeps;

Among their branches then prowls,

And midst periwinkles’ cowls

Like a kid in bounding leaps.

 

No more the tetanic cramps,

The satanic shouts and stamps

Of winter so harsh and grim;

But, over the softened earth,

A freshness spreads from its birth

To green cornfields’ distant rim.

 

But midst the trees that vibrate

And with full force resonate

A fiery wind sweeps along

Heady pollens, crimson flowers

Loud bird-calls and bees in showers

In a swarming, swirling song.

 

Come! Let us kiss as we please

To sobbing nought can appease

From gentle, ecstatic doves;

May our avowals agree

With the mad calls breaking free

Of the thickets crazed with love.

 

Marie Dauguet: 'Sous la bise'

The Bise on Lake Geneva

 

Sous la bise

 

Sous la bise qui le knoute,

     Ecoute

Le bois se tordre et hurler

 

Et, dans un ciel sans lumière,

     Lanières,

La pluie fauve le cingler.

 

Fuyant l’atroce martyre

     Chavire

D’un coup le bois tout entier,

 

Puis soudain jusqu’en la nue

     Se rue,

Redressé d’un bond altier;

 

Mais le vent qui le décharne,

     S’acharne,

Mate sa rébellion;

 

Des feuillages que transperce

     L’averse

Le flamboyant tourbillon

 

Emplit l’air qui s’en effraie,

     La plaie

Rougit des bois flagellés;

 

Et voici de la hêtrée

     Vautrée

Des gouttes de sang gicler.

 

 

Under the Bise

 

Under the lashing cold Bise*,

     The trees –

Oh hear how they writhe and howl!

 

And, from a sky where light fails,

     Thick trails –

The fawn rain scourges their cowls.

 

Fleeing the imminent spate

     Of fate,

The whole wood just overturns,

 

Though up to the clouds then speeds

     Stampedes,

And haughtily fate now spurns.

 

But the wind which assails it,

     Flails it

Quelling its mutinous act;

 

The leaves are pierced by the rain

     Insane,

This swashbuckling cataract

 

Whirls through the air filled with dread,

     Turns red

The wound of the welted wood;

 

And here from the sprawling beech–

     Tree’s breach

One sees drops of spurting blood.

 

* The Bise is a specific European wind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bise

 

* The Bise is a specific European wind, also referred to by La Fontaine in his famous fable 'La cigale et la fourmi': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bise

Marie Dauguet: 'La folie des parfums'

 

La folie des parfums

 

Que je les goûte et que j’en meure,

Tel un philtre aphrodisiaque,

Les parfums déments qui m’effleurent

Embrumant les nuiteux cloaques.

 

Que j’en comprenne le mystère

De cet étourdissant breuvage,

Effluve de Pan solitaire

Dansant par les tourbeux pacages.

 

O voluptés exténuantes,

Odeurs, qui sont des mains tenaces,

Des souches que l’hiver crevasse

Des champignons aux chairs gluantes.

 

Comme un Dieu qui m’enlacerait,

Que votre errance me possède,

Plus mythique qu’un chant d’aède

M’enseignant le divin secret.

 

 

The madness of perfumes

 

May I both taste and from them die –

Philtre that senses sets alight –

Demented perfumes that brush by,

Shrouding the cesspits of the night.

 

May I the mystery be shown

Of perfumes’ stunning potency,

This whiff of Pan, who all alone

Dances across the bogland lea.

 

O gruelling pleasures, bliss that racks,

Odours – unyielding hands that mesh –

Of tree stumps that the winter cracks,

Of mushrooms with their slimy flesh.

 

Like a God who would clasp me long,

May all your roaming me entwine,

Teaching the secret that’s divine

More subtly than a poet’s song.

 

Marie Dauguet: 'Barcarolle'

Barcarolle

 

Comme un filet ourdi,

Par la brume qui dort,

Du silence engourdi

Traîne sur le flot mort,

 

Vogue en l’espace morne

Aux sinistres remous.

La rame en l’eau sans borne

Pourrit et se dissout.

 

Etalant leurs replis

Aux temps qui ne sont plus,

Déferlent vers l’oubli

Des flux et des reflux;

 

Du vent et de la cendre.......

Fantôme dont tournoie

L’ombre aux blêmes méandres,

Un bateau qui se noie.

 

Sans qu’on ait rien compris

Au voyage dément,

Un geste, un dernier cri,

Et c’est l’enlisement!

 

 

Barcarole

 

Like a loose-woven net,

In the mist that’s asleep,

By silence numbed, beset

By current’s listless seep,

 

Drifts in the dismal space

To sinister slow swirls.

The oar melts without trace

In water’s endless furls.

 

Their folds spread, coalesce

With times that are no more,

They seek forgetfulness

Of ebbs and flows ashore;

 

Of winds and ashen cinders.......

A phantom twirled around

By shade to pale meanders,

A boat about to drown.

 

No meaning to make out,

A mad trip, nowhere bound,

A gesture, one last shout,

And then the craft’s bogged down!