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The Deception of Free Verse: Dreams I, Translation of Etiemble’s L’imposture du vers libre by T. Wignesan 

(From René Etiemble’s only poetry collection: le Coeur et la cendre: soixante ans de poésie (the heart and the ash sixty years of poetry). Paris: Les deux animaux, 1984, pp. 123-126.)

Yet He, who contemplated his incandescent world
and the sterile streaming
of the lava,
drunk with the swirling of the primal incense
dreamed on…

His shape, during that period, took on all forms
ten thousand beings milling in him, inexistants;
the amoebas mixed with gigantosaurs
awaiting the hour
of the amoebagigantosaurs.

How you were divine, God, before the Creation
of your own non-being,
before your sacrifice, your suicide,
how divinely monstrous:
I see you such as I was you in your entrails
all the bodies of all the fishes in all the seas in all ponds,
blossoming on greenish scales of mackerels, the fins
shining on roaches
						and red fish,
in all the wings in all the albatrosses feathery
						in all the skies,
		the wings of all the chicken,
walking on the thousand feet of all the scolopenders
on the four hairy columns of mammoths,
				of rough rhinoceroses
on the four legs of lambs
on the two feet of all pterodactyls
             					of all ducks,
of all humans,
on the rings of all the earthworms.
Your voice which charms deaf rocks more
			than songs of future sirens
sometimes raucously roared;
your caresses bill-cooing turtle-doves
trumpeting strident
when your ten thouand mouths opened.

Therefore,
hermophrodite inseminated by its universal sperm
the Being
bearing plants and beasts, all
and the woman whose womb as yet to be formed
dreamed in this way:

The scintillating effervescence of granite, of basalts, 
                                                          of diamonds
freeze into position thus:
Mountains of rock, organs of Titan, cristals of fire.
Collapsing clouds, rapid cataracts
tumble down abrupt stony walls.
The earth swells valleys
mother earth made pregnant by ferns of great shadows.
Ocean rivers sweep along continents
open into flanks of mountains’ heroic holes
pour a freshness of love on thirsty roots…
the first pollen grain pollutes the first pistil.
The first flesh dazzled by the light
sketches the quiverings of joy that will be.
Two lives lie in the wet clay
two lives
ten thousand lives.

The eye – without becoming the enormous dreamer –
closes over this total image of its death
sees the saurian ichthyophages
horned beaks with sharp teeth
shivery mammoths
all the theory of winged horses
winged men
men without wings
Me
And I, on this earth where I was dropped by mistake
									In your dream
however much I raised my eyes higher than the clouds,
however much I scrutinised the celestial transparence
however much I could recall the person who in your 
                                   entrails I was as you
no more do I see your face in its ten thousand true 
                                                                 Facets,
nothing more do I hear 
the rustling of so many snowy and metallic scales over
						so many feathers.

Nothing
nothing more…

“No! No! Not this reckless Golgotha!
God! You are mistaken.
God! I surrender myself (only) to you yourself.”
But the winds wailed with the wolves
“Tough luck!”

“Just as well!”
At last my egoism refuses to accept the cross the spear
		                                      and the sponge
with the venom
Why then every evening the same stars
entice themselves into the self-same ponds?
Stars, make yourselves scarce!
I know all about you and your promenades.
Too docile, horses offer their jaw bits on flanks where
				spurs caress the necks.
Water which flows so miraculously so fastidiously servile:
seas part themselves,
alcarazas freeze lips. 
Every night when fatigue overcomes me with sleep
the sun
retracts its golden claws in order not to derange my 
                                                                  sleep.
Drunk with power
like a Ceasar like a Nero like a Caligula
I make myself small
“O! such as I was you in your entrails
allow me the remembrance and the regret.”

© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2014
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