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Seven Years Rachel, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel's Sept Ans Rachel By T Wignesan
Seven Years Rachel, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel's Sept Ans Rachel By T Wignesan
Seven Years Rachel*, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel’s Sept ans Rachel by T. Wignesan
For seven years Rachel remains sealed
By the kiss she received from Jacob
For seven years she keeps her eyelashes lowered
Under the impact of their unique encounter.
When he saw her on that one occasion
He was reduced to tears,
So very much of her sweetness was revealed to him
The blue tint of the nocturnal sunset
Reminiscent of God.
There’s no love without nostalgia
When will I seize what has gotten hold of me ?
You’re as beautiful as the fleecy Rachel
When the immense army comes together.
You shine on up there like a moon-like pebble
At the bottom of a well.
You are unreachable further than the stars
An a priori hint of Him.
From the moment your gaze comes to rest on me
It lights up the fires of Bethel.*
I have seen God enthroned in your pupils
And all the exit paths in the world
Converge upon you.
The désert which has pursued me close upon the heels
Hardened roused till it reaches you
Until my return to the fold
That was a spiraling tearing apart of the fire
Hatched from beneath my entrails.
O ladder which consumes me O flame
The dwelling by whom my insides burn
You are the native home of the soul
You are the mother’s smile come to rest on the child
Yours is the infancy of God over this world
Virgin speech like God’s own gaze
The unruly smoothness of fire.
(from Jacob, O.C. t. II, p. 62)
*The poem alludes, draws and constructs itself on the imagery relating to the « legend » of the biblical Jacob’s dream and the ladder, recorded in Genesis, key symbols in the interpretations of Judeo-Christian and Islamic religious concepts and history.
• Bethel : (Lit.) « House of God »
© T. Wignesan – Paris, October 17, 2014
Copyright © T Wignesan | Year Posted 2014
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