Provisional
states of the poem …
Verbal exercizes
…
by Jean-Michel MAULPOIX,
Cheyne éditeur, december 1998
Translated from the original
French by Catherine Wieder
It might be a room. With a
view over the sea or over the town. Preferably on the
second or on the third floor. With white walls, few
adornments and sparse furniture. A room with piles of
linen, order and storage, bunches of flowers now in
vases, changing lights and temperatures. I do not
necessarily sit on the word « chair ». It might
just as well be « horizon », « window
», « shore », « river bend » or
« eye-lid ». For the window is open : One may
either step in or step out. Sometimes, it empties itself
like one's head or as silence would. And then there's
nothing left to say, nothing to hide, no words on which
to rest, no bed to sleep on, nor any glass on the table
filled with clear water.
It might be a body. No
matter whether it were a man's or a woman's. Medium
built. Rather slender. A body with its appetites, its
gestures, its joints, its pallors, its sudden blushes,
its hot or cold flushes, its strains, its wrinkles, its
bumps, its leanness or fatness, with blood, laughter, of
course tears and a vast amount of organs or hidden
substances. I do not necessarily half-open my lips to say
a few words. It might be just a slight touch, as if a
hand were lightly caressing a face or the pen over the
page, a listening, a light ruffling, the crackle of
either bones or nerves, hardly an intention. Such a body
might not be mine even if now and then I settle in it as
if it were in a woman's lukewarmth, mingling my breath
with hers, but as always leaving far too quickly and,
flayed alive, going back to my scratches.
Such is the earth put into
orbit around the sun. The earth seen from up there with
its valleys, its factories, its trees and its roads, its
corn-fields and its waste-lands, its crowds and its
tobaconnist's, its leaves falling in october, its suns
rising and moons falling, with people stopping, its fine
and bad weathers. Surely, I must forget quite a few
things on my list since from the earth it is forever
impossible to say it all. And here I am, doomed to
restraint it to this very sheet of paper, to this
shoulder or this small iron gate half ajar opening on the
small garden. Every single thing, every word extracted
from the dictionary may become a room or a body, an
eyelid or a smoking chimney.
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