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by Jean-Michel
MAULPOIX
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Translated from the original French by Catherine Wieder |
It's snowing on the Place Stanislas, on the frozen index of the old King of Poland
It's snowing on the music kiosk, on the glass windows, on the opalines of the Excelsior Café, on the churchyard, on the garrison, on the canal, on the small gardens, on the Meurthe & Moselle, on the rubble and on the Lorraine thistles, on the Bergamottes and the Duchesses, on the building of the Est Republicain paper
It's snowing in the middle of everything. On your dark eyes and on your black pullover
It's always snowing on my love whatever the season
It's snowing on your woman's name,
on both of us who changed more than is sensible
Everything forlorn and no longer there is falling over us in a white and slightly cold shower
But it remains so tender, so light, so eager to melt over our foreheads
It's hardly some kind of burn, as if someone so far away were reminding himself to you
You hadn't forgotten him. The snow lasts for ever while time and tide wait for no man.
It's snowing : living is no longer what it used to look like
Someone takes care of something
And life shelters in within itself : it sleeps a little, it remembers
Is it time thus showering, showing itself and setting down ? Or is it belief which clears ? Or love tossing its wings about ?
It's teeming down with snow as it never rained before
So that only would remain that which really matters to us
All the rest is buried deep down : even death is a false idea
We are no longer ice-bound
Love sleep would be a more pertinent term, as would be letting onself to believing,
Your shoulder : and the snow and the longing to rest one's head over it.
The One and indivisible is snowing loose ; snowflakes are of various sizes
Crowding solitudes are snowing, both fleeting and stubborn
And that's why I insist : white over black, black over white
A shower of snow becomes my balance
I'm but a snowflake, You are the cloak, thou the very balminess of that cold, ceaselessly added to that cold, while the agony is prolonged and death it forever at stake
I listen to that snow while you fall asleep in it.
It's snowing, voices at the lowest, in Bar-le-Duc station. The train, returning, tosses the white bushes about, takes its leave of back yards, of sheds and of cabbage patches (looking like numbed wedding dresses) ...
You wonder which love you're returning to. Magic breaks off after Châlons : nothing but a tiny sugar sprinkle over the rooftops.
(Dec.2., 1996)
