Joubert Jean - Oblique prayers: new poems with 14 translations from Jean Joubert

The four sections of this book represent a thematic, not a chronological order. Similarly, the poems within each section are arranged in whathas seemed to me the most appropriate sequence, whether or not it was that in which they were composed. The section of translations from Jean Joubert requires a word of introduction. Joubert was born in 1928 in Chlette-sur-Loing (Loiret), France. He has lived in Languedoc for the last twenty-five years and teaches American literature at the Universit Paul Valry at Montpellier. He has published novels and childrens stories as well as poetry, and his collection Pomes: 1955-1975 (Grasset, 1975) was awarded the prize of the Acadmie Mallarm in 1978.

Most of these poems are taken from a later volume, Cinquante toiles pour un espaceblanc (Grasset, 1982). I hope to present a book-length selection of translations from his work in the future; meanwhile, it is hoped that these poemswill serve to introduce him to the American public.

for Guillevici When I lose my center of gravity I cant fly: levitations a stone cast straight as a lark to fall plumb and rebound. ii Half a wheels a rising sun: without spokes, an arch: half a loaf reveals the inner wheat: leavened transubstantiation. iii A child grows in ones body, pushes out and breaks off: nerves denying their non-existence twist and pinch long after: after that otherness floats far, thistledown engine, up and over horizons ramparts. Each life spins into its own orbitrain of meteor showers, sparkle of some brittle desire, is it? the stab of deep pain? Not without tearing a few fibers, the magnet forces pull apart. I. He. He.

Being is not referential. I wake: instant recollectiona shadow threatens my sons life. Others slide their elongations toward his spirit. My being, unconformable to his perception, moves on. Awake, I keep waking. He survives and leaves, moving through the apparition he sees and away from it.

Again waking, I stretch a hand out to stop the warning clock. Time is another country. Squinting toward light: a tree has filled it with green diamonds. Or theres the air, bemused: newfallen snow. Shock waves of a music I dont hear as you dont hear mine.

Nonchalant clouds below me dangle shadows into the curved river at Saskatoon. Nonchalant clouds below me dangle shadows into the curved river at Saskatoon.

Atlas of frontiers long-redrawn, gazeteer of obsolete cities a jet-vapor garland stretches and stretches to link your incantations, and breaks. Still audible, stiffly revolving, the globe of the world creaks out enticements. Decades pile up like thunderheads. O Geography! On your thick syrops I float and float, I glide through your brew of bitter herbs. Mmbulla Mountain, low and round, hums in green and hums in tune, down in the Dreamtime. World, you grow vaster.

Our time cannot encompass you.

for Angela Jackson As they roam over grassland the elephants cast a blue river of shadows. Their ears flap as they listen. One evening, caught in icy wind, the traffic snarling, I saw for one moment their fluent stride, and heard a quiet in Africa, hum without menace. They listened to sunlight, and flowed onward, unhurried. Remember, they are there now.

Each in turn enters the river of blue.

They make mistakes: they busy themselves, anxious to see more, straining their necks to look beyond blue trees at dusk, forgetting it is the dust at their feet reveals the strangest, most needful truth. They think they want a cherishing love to protect them from the anguish they must distribute, the way wives of cruel kings handed loaves of bread to the poor a love that delights in them: but when ironic Time gives them such love they discoverand only thenits weight, which, if they received and kept it, would crush down the power entrusted to them. The tender lover, aghast at what he sees them seeing, or blind and gently denying it, would set a wall of lead about them, hold down their feathered Hermes-feet, close the eyes that brim not with tears but with visions, silence the savage music such golden mouths are sworn to utter. With one I learned how roots turn to grip loam, learned the pulse of stone, mineral arteries, skyless auroras. Was it so indeed? I remember now only telling myself it was so.

Another led me under the wing of the waterfall. Light was fine mist. My skin was myself. I remember now only the words, what they tell is gone. And others I loved what were their kingdoms? What songs did I sing of them, and gazed from what high windows toward their borders? I journeyed onward, my road always drawing me further.

But that other: he danced like a gypsys bear at the winter crossroads, the days of your youth and his are a bit of blue glass bevelled by oceans and kept in his pocket, wherever he is is always now.

Touch, mass, weight, warmth: a language you found you knew. He brought you the bread of sunlight on great platters of laughter.

I thought I was growing wings it was a cocoon. I thought, now is the time to step into the fire it was deep water. Eschatology is a word I learned as a child: the study of Last Things; facing my mirrorno longer young, the newsalways of death, the dogsrising from sleep and clamoring and howling, howling, nevertheless I see for a moment thats not it: it is the First Things. Toward me. one afternoon, I saw a patient standing in the middle of the driveway Something was moving on his head. one afternoon, I saw a patient standing in the middle of the driveway Something was moving on his head.

Suddenly, two large wings flapped over his head in the light breeze He had rolled his pants up to his knobby knees and wore an opened leather jacket over a T-shirt with a large number 17 the mesmerized motorists slowed to a crawl for a longer look The patient later told his therapist he had realized that people were startled by his appearance. In fact, he had relished it Boston Globe, December 1983 I could be stone, a live bird on my civic head. They would not look twice. This is my pigeon and I its prophet. No one but I found it. It died for me to find, to lift like the Host and place aloft, a soft weight on my naked scalp, where one more time flailing wings can contest with the wind.

I am a column, a pillar of righteousness, upholding mystery, a dead pigeon that spoke and continues to speak, that told no one but me what to do, told me to hold still under its cold flutterings, told me to relish the foolish grins, the awestruck staring of passing, passing, tenuous motorists, stand barelegged in the winter day, display with the same wind beating upon itthe number life and its warders assign me, inscribed on my thin shirt over my heart: I the prophet, chosen from all, ennobled, singular, by this unique unfathomable death.

Instead of arms to hold you I want longer limbs, vines, to wrap you twofold, threefold. I wrap you, I pick you up, I carry you, your knees drawn up, your head bent, your arms crossed on your breast. You are heavy. I walk, I walk. Onward. Onward.

Hill and dale. Indoors. Out again. You say nothing. You grow smaller, I wrap you fourfold. I show you all the wonders you showed me, infinitesimal and immense.

You grow smaller, smaller, and always heavier. Why will you not speak?

Fogbillows crest over ocean, soundless, unbreaking, infinitely patient. Tier after tier, mountains rehearse the passage from green to evenings amethyst. Red wings repeat with unslaked thirst their one sweet song. The rains cleared off and the cats are dreamily watching the lucid world, perched on the fence-rail, striving for nothing; their shadows grow long.