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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

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