Friday, September 3, 2021

Marie Uguay (1955-1981): Three poems, translated by Tim Duffy

 

 

 

 

 

“Il fut un temps d’attente dans le froid sel d’un été”

 

There was a pause in the cold salt of summer
Silence was these piles of sands destroyed
or multiplied by light and wind

One day       ashes
to history’s call and the dead

One day       solar beds under the heft of noon
strong vessels

confidantes of solitude
One day       roses of breasts and knees

quiet flesh under the caress of sea mist
One day        whiter even than Saturn’s ring

for the exhilarating purity of the sea
for the nights of lightning and moons

for the seagulls
white for the perfect representation of silence

white between the forms and flora of the sea.

 

 

 

“Il existe pourtant des pommes et des oranges”


Despite it all, there are still apples and oranges
Cézanne holding with a single hand
all the fruitful fullness of the earth

the beautiful vigor of the fruit
I do not know all their names by heart

nor the generous warmth of the fruit on white fabric

But the hospitals will have no end
The factories will have no end
Long lines in the frost will have no end

Beaches turned into swamps will have no end

I have known those who have suffered, struggling to breathe
whose dying will have no end
listening to the song of a violin or of a crow

or of maple trees in April

No end to reaching the rivers in themselves
which flow by carrying ice floes of light,
the remnants of seasons  they have so many dreams
 

But the barricades    the vestibules will have no end
The tortures       the cancers will have no end
the men who toil in the mines

with the struggles of their people
who are shot to death anyway  raging with fury

will have no end
their dreams of the color orange
 

Some women will have no end of their sewing of men
and the men will have no end of pouring themselves another drink

Yet despite the many wrinkles of the world
despite the many exiles
the many wounds

in the blindless of stones
I still capture the sound of waves

the peace of oranges

Cézanne sweetly claims from the suffering of the earth
                                                         
of his creation
and all the vibrant summer comes to wake me

comes sweetly              madly to bequeath me these fruits

  

 

 

“C’est une nuit blanche des statues”

 

It’s a sleepless night of statues

Our bodies are stuck like trees
in the terror of frost.

We survey the ruins of the city
the contempt and the rushed footsteps of pedestrians
separating us from pleasure

separating us from knowing who we are

We are the beautiful sculptures
the anonymous reliefs of the frigid death-masks of concrete and
        
of marble.

 

 

 

 

Tim Duffy is a teacher and writer living in Connecticut. His work has been recently published in Sepia Journal, Hominum, Rabid Oak, Pleiades, Entropy, and elsewhere.

Marie Uguay (1955-1981) was a Québécoise poet and author of three volumes of poetry: Signe et rumeur, L’Outre-vie, and Autoportraits. After a stunning early career and publishing her first volume of poetry at sixteen years of age, Uguay died after a battle with cancer at the age of twenty-six.