Dreams I Translation of Etiemble S Poem Reves I By T Wignesan

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