Every day I employ the dialect of mad cyclones.
I speak the lunacy of contrary winds.
Every evening I use the patois of furious rains.
I say the fury of water is spilling over.
Every night I talk the language of hysterical tempests
to the Caribbean islands. I speak the hysteria of the sea in rut.
Dialect of cyclones.
Patois of rains.
Language of tempests. The unfurling of life spiraling.
I speak the lunacy of contrary winds.
Every evening I use the patois of furious rains.
I say the fury of water is spilling over.
Every night I talk the language of hysterical tempests
to the Caribbean islands. I speak the hysteria of the sea in rut.
Dialect of cyclones.
Patois of rains.
Language of tempests. The unfurling of life spiraling.
Fundamentally life is tension.
Towards something. Towards someone.
Towards oneself. Towards the point
of maturing where one ties and unties
the ancient and the new.
Death and birth.
And all beings realize themselves investigating their double.
An inquiry that is confused
at its limit with the intensity of a need,
of a desire and of an infinite search.
Towards something. Towards someone.
Towards oneself. Towards the point
of maturing where one ties and unties
the ancient and the new.
Death and birth.
And all beings realize themselves investigating their double.
An inquiry that is confused
at its limit with the intensity of a need,
of a desire and of an infinite search.
Dogs pass by. I have always been obsessed
with wandering dogs–they yap after
the silhouette of a woman I pursue.
After the image of a man I am looking for.
After my double.
After the murmur of voices slipping away. After so many years. One would
say thirty centuries.
The woman has left. Without a drum beat or a trumpet. With my heart opposed.
The man did not offer his hand on the spot.
My double is always ahead of me. And the unbolted throats of evening dogs
howled terribly with the screech of a broken accordeon.
Rivers. Storms. Lightning. Mountains.
Trees. Lights. Rains. Wild oceans.
Carry me away in the frenetic marrow of your joints. Carry me away.
A sliver of clarity is sufficient so I may be born viable. So that
I accept life. Tension. The inexorable law of maturing. Osmosis and symbiosis.
Carry me away! The sound of a step suffices, of a look, of a muffled voice, so that I might live happily with hope that waking up is possible among men. Carry me away! For a little nothing suffices so that I might articulate the sap that circulates in the marrow of these cosmic joints.
with wandering dogs–they yap after
the silhouette of a woman I pursue.
After the image of a man I am looking for.
After my double.
After the murmur of voices slipping away. After so many years. One would
say thirty centuries.
The woman has left. Without a drum beat or a trumpet. With my heart opposed.
The man did not offer his hand on the spot.
My double is always ahead of me. And the unbolted throats of evening dogs
howled terribly with the screech of a broken accordeon.
Rivers. Storms. Lightning. Mountains.
Trees. Lights. Rains. Wild oceans.
Carry me away in the frenetic marrow of your joints. Carry me away.
A sliver of clarity is sufficient so I may be born viable. So that
I accept life. Tension. The inexorable law of maturing. Osmosis and symbiosis.
Carry me away! The sound of a step suffices, of a look, of a muffled voice, so that I might live happily with hope that waking up is possible among men. Carry me away! For a little nothing suffices so that I might articulate the sap that circulates in the marrow of these cosmic joints.
Frankétienne (born 1936) Haiti
Translated by Indran Amirthanayagam
Source: Beltway Poetry Quarterly
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