Online: Onward, onward, noble steed

Trinity Journal of Literary Translation | 129

Online: Onward, onward, noble steed

trans. Emily Drumsta

Onward, onward, noble steed to the place my face can follow to the place where the noontime hour illuminates the night. Forward, backward, onward, what do we care if the arrow points here or there for all arrows are traitors in the horizons’ circuit. Onward, onward, noble steed, train with a driver gone mad, whistling through night’s gardens, happy for no reason, lost in the labyrinth, my steed. Whinny, rejoice, not for love, not for anything, hurrying toward your fate, rejoice toward birth, rejoice. Hyenas howl with lust, and a sleepless young beauty shrieks at the pages of a story you crushed beneath your hooves and a poem onto which you liberally emptied the contents of your bladder. Whinny, rejoice, and gallop on among the spears, gallop on between the teeth of killers, my steed, gallop on over the faces of the dead

even if they’re the faces of our fathers and the killers—the killers are friends from the road. Onward, onward from hunger to hunger and from hunger to craving. Whinny, go faster, drive temptation, emptiness and weariness from your haunches, gallop onward, onward between the never-ending walls. The pit at the end is the same as the one at the beginning and along the way, to deceive the traveler there are holes—so don’t be deceived: the path will not be straight in the morning, and the branches will not reach the abodes of primordial spring. If you need to stop while I’m riding, my steed, then stop at the ruins where fortresses impeded my pleasure— I love the ruins the eyes of dancers fluttering between the cracks in the marble, and victors peering out over balconies, contented with the faces of fifty thousand dead seventy thousand, a thousand thousand (who can keep track in the labyrinth, my steed?) We left behind us mouths and breasts burning with intimate fire and the fragrance of pines in the first rains of winter. Did we not plant kisses among these stones and gush with passion every night among these ruins, while death

called to us from every direction like the songs of the Sirens? If you need to stop, then stop for a while where lips are more stubborn than daylight, more lasting than the heads of the pimps and the mouths of cannons. Then gallop onward, to the plains and canyon roads, and return to foreign streets where radios howl— a funeral of the living for the living.

134 | French

Online: La mer

Nérée Beauchemin

Loin des grands rochers noirs que baise la marée, La mer calme, la mer au murmure endormeur, Au large, tout là-bas, lente s’est retirée, Et son sanglot d’amour dans l’air du soir se meurt.

La mer fauve, la mer vierge, la mer sauvage, Au profond de son lit de nacre inviolé Redescend, pour dormir, loin, bien loin du rivage, Sous le seul regard pur du doux ciel étoilé.

La mer aime le ciel : c’est pour mieux lui redire, À l’écart, en secret, son immense tourment, Que la fauve amoureuse, au large se retire, Dans son lit de corail, d’ambre et de diamant.

Et la brise n’apporte à la terre jalouse, Qu’un souffle chuchoteur, vague, délicieux : L’âme des océans frémit comme une épouse Sous le chaste baiser des impassibles cieux.