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Love's pangsBitterness of the sea
Translated from the original French by Catherine Wieder The sea awaits its open call, looks
for its waters, desires the blue, spits and clutches and
falters when it breaks its bark and shell, and the brittle
slate of its steeples, and all the glasses it emptied and
then threw away behind the bushes. The sea screeches at night and
fluffies before falling asleep, its head cuddled amid its
arms, resembling a fearful child, seeking in the quiet night
ideas of dawn and turmoils, a little more wine, a little
more wind and light, just a little oblivion. Its huge engine-like heart collapses
in its blue ; its easement begs its wages of salt : a few
drops, a little bread, such a clear plunder, not even enough
to reach the open sea after so many waves stirred up for so
long ! It longs to part with the sky who
manipulates it, fawns upon it, or boos it : O for those
wings it misses when the horizon is at point blank range !
Will it ever see its dawn rising within a woman's Christian
name ? It has neither body nor flesh to
belong to, it comes back from nowhere and talks amiss, it
dreams of other things, it speaks and dreams thingumajigs :
why not admit that time at noon ends at the bottom of a lake
? People believe that blue forms and
surges right on its eye-lid : people believe it to be mad
and it only grieves, uselessly dreaming of twigs and roots,
sitting as it is on some kind of leather suit-case right at
the end of the beach where no one would come and pick it
up. What darkness, what light surges in
its numbed head of a sitting woman ? Its arms are wide open
to welcome those children coming from the vast seas. What a
delight in her exciting their laughter and splashes, in
bathing their naked feet and licking their light
skin. But living is none of its business.
It never tells its desire, feverish as it is of both images
and shores ; it won't go any further than this very sorrow,
of an impossible lavender-blue hue of former love letters
and handkerchieves bathed in tears. Here it is, sepulchre-grey, with all
this void around it, picking death with a brisk kiss,
sucking its stone and spitting the fruit, staggering along
like forlorn memories, hushing prayers, breaking the very
pot it has emptied just after the dream. Its heart is a chasm starting, night
after night, the same doomed day, singing with the same
voice, blurred with turmoil and noise, wandering along,
cleaning its wounds and always uselessly pursuing its water
poor in love. |
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