The Temporary Altar Translation of Etiemble S Quintet Le Reposoir By T Wignesan

The temporary altar, Translation of Etiemble’s quintet: Le reposoir by T. Wignesan For us As for me, I have renounced the noxious vault where the other life child concealed a father whom he had sometimes betrayed his mother who took him for someone else the baby she sensed to be a clone. For you, I have renounced the death mask which earlier on I yearned leaving on this earth, baked dust. Pride? But tomorrow you wander about looking for me in this me, void of feeling, i‘d rather leave nothing: all: my image in you. For you, I have renounced the common grave where, in me, eponymous heroes mortify themselves. Pride of another kind – hero and zero, these rhyme! – which provoked me to disown my verse thanks to theirs in swarms: for you, my passing is not news in brief. For you, I have renounced the morgue’s formalin: life lingers on in me as a Sorgues medic glides me in a body-bag after the great organs of the death mass. I’d hardly serve to disgorge your viscera live, and dead, to undo you. For us, I’ll burn in a crematory oven: not love’s fires which burnt their poems: not loves gone cold which had me in thrall -the floodtide of sperm and blood, mixed with anathemas-, but of wood and for you. Death, where’s your victory? © T. Wignesan – Paris, 2014