POETRY
Selected poems
Noirmoutier
I have something to say,
I like writing to say it.
Hm…
I write poetry, just so,
to dream, I would say.
I think so?
I dream to see what to say,
and write it down.
… right?
I’d rather have the sun again,
Noirmoutier,
E. saying ‘there’s no wind at all, do you hear?’
billowed sailboats, red, purple, dark,
a lighthouse lit in broad daylight,
unmoving.
Opened newspapers, magazines,
Ouest-France,
phones with low batteries,
the light in her hair,
on my shoulders,
words unsaid, because
what are they
when this is how it is,
in the sleeping world
of Noirmoutier?
I write to dream,
with the light in these eyes,
even so.
D'un même regard saisissant
le grain de sable de la dune...
D'un même regard embrassant
le grain de sable de la dune...
I dream it, even so.
A lion
I dreamt of a lion, pale, proud and strong,
Queen, king - heart beating double...
As it rushed past me - rose, fell - was I wrong
To shudder, love it, sing, shield its trouble?
It fell, again. Yet eyes and breath denoted fear,
In me, in it - in them... but it did remain
In that other way. At peace, rested, ready to hear
This voice, my breath. Playful, and new again.
Somewhere or other
Somewhere or other the track is lost,
The house unseen, the tree left still.
Quiet in the woods, silent in the frost,
My sun is in the west, a heart is left to fill.
Somewhere or other, maybe far or near,
The wind might come, the mist will burn.
Moon or stars will rise and without fear
I'll try some way a wasted heart to turn.
Somewhere or other the line is found
By a soft voice, singing it true.
I leave field and jump hedge by sound
Of foolish heart, beating safe and new.
Shifting skies
The more I see of streets -
of solid paving stones, rust-coloured walkways,
iron and glass that would cut if it could
cut -
the more I do
and have done to me,
within and beyond screens, in eyes
and ears that I loved when
they weren't mine
alone
-
the more I go to streams,
to the stream,
the river,
picking pebbles in the ground,
cold and dark,
pike-nosed,
with hand or toe of
boot,
thinking the water glass but for
the mud,
and slime on the stones,
those pebbles glistening unwanted
in my hands,
twisting and untwisting in the riverbed
to a darker unseen light,
like a calathea moving in that room
I lived in,
où je sentirai ses bras si beaux ...
-
the less the doing
and the undoing strikes home,
is heard even - oh but for a life of doing!
Simply it feels less now,
matters even less now
than the unseen green,
shifting in the icy water, the dreamy water
- hazy all -
less than the unsettled, unreal and shifting
sky on fire.
New Year scenario
Home for December.
Could I go down in the cold
to meet another guest, quite in the dark,
feet bare, backs lit, against glass and air?
The new year belongs to the brave I suppose,
and supposing,
fall asleep.
Yves, Emily, Sarah, father, Christabel and I
eat hot cakes for breakfast.
Y and E
boast of a hot holiday.
S mocks them mercilessly
with mere twitches of the eye.
Father and C propose a reunion at 4:
mulled wine and mince pies when the day’s run out.
That’d be splendid, to be sure. Splendid.
Now, how to keep things as they were,
hope-filled, at the next step, in empty fields?