Post by MoonyLuna on Feb 18, 2009 12:08:59 GMT -5
As gray as an old wooden telegraph pole, I am now
Growing gnarled. I am beginning to crack, and I am
Getting deaf. I no longer hear the beatific sound
In myself that, as if with love, makes even concrete hum.
It was the music of the wind, in chords long and severe,
And like its accurate and pure tuning fork, I chimed.
And wasn't it also sometimes the music of the spheres,
The night beneath the plectrum of the moon, and the untamed
Longing of the stars?—But is it truly music? When all
That is detonates, explodes, and improvises its jazz
Across the supernova, the aphasiac black hole,
The nebulous cluster where love is born of excess gas?
So when I had a good ear, what was I able to hear
Ascending in my fibers, up out of the embanked earth?
What melody was it, monotonous but still sincere,
And like the one the grass whispers, no longer to be heard?
But stop for a moment anyway, you bastard drivers,
Always hurrying; for one second, rest your hand on my shaft
And then one cheek on the spot where the still-smooth wood quivers:
See, I remain on the lookout (even if I am deaf)
For the space where my swaying, still-flexible wire
Is measuring a mountain, weighing a bird or a cloud.
I'm going to be rooted for the long run in the quiet,
But might perhaps be green again at the next flowering.
copyright
Jacques Réda
translated from the French by Andrew Shields
Growing gnarled. I am beginning to crack, and I am
Getting deaf. I no longer hear the beatific sound
In myself that, as if with love, makes even concrete hum.
It was the music of the wind, in chords long and severe,
And like its accurate and pure tuning fork, I chimed.
And wasn't it also sometimes the music of the spheres,
The night beneath the plectrum of the moon, and the untamed
Longing of the stars?—But is it truly music? When all
That is detonates, explodes, and improvises its jazz
Across the supernova, the aphasiac black hole,
The nebulous cluster where love is born of excess gas?
So when I had a good ear, what was I able to hear
Ascending in my fibers, up out of the embanked earth?
What melody was it, monotonous but still sincere,
And like the one the grass whispers, no longer to be heard?
But stop for a moment anyway, you bastard drivers,
Always hurrying; for one second, rest your hand on my shaft
And then one cheek on the spot where the still-smooth wood quivers:
See, I remain on the lookout (even if I am deaf)
For the space where my swaying, still-flexible wire
Is measuring a mountain, weighing a bird or a cloud.
I'm going to be rooted for the long run in the quiet,
But might perhaps be green again at the next flowering.
copyright
Jacques Réda
translated from the French by Andrew Shields