Translation of Eric Mottram's Time Sight Unseen, Part 1 By T Wignesan

Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN, Part One by T. Wignesan

"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis, and an awareness of the imaginative possibilities of relationship between particles”. 
                                        Eric Mottram. 
December 29, 1924 - January 17, 1995, prolific poet, editor of the Poetry Review (organ of The Poetry Society in England during the seventies), eminent critic (Times Literary Supplement) and Emeritus Professor of English and American Literature at King’s College, University of London in 1990. He won a scholarship from Blackpool Grammar School to Cambridge, but chose to join the Royal Navy in 1943. He obtained a Double First in English Tripos (1947-1950) at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, after serving out the War as second-in-command of a mine-sweeper in the Baltic and the Bay of Bengal. 

Just for the anecdote, his family traces its descent from the times of the Norman Conquest as " Lords of the Manor " on his father's side. His father was a civil servant who worked to put in place Britain's social security system. Once in 1964, Eric showed me - somewhat diffidently - the family's Coat of Arms, saying : " Do you know what this is ? ", and I never (for a while) stopped kidding him about it all. The real reason why he didn't take up the posts offered to him in the States - such as a professorship at Rutgers - was that he was very proud of being " British " ; yet he owed his post at London University to an American : Professor Robert Earnest SPILLER who authored The Literary History of the United States (1948).

The following translation is the first part of “Time Sight Unseen”, published in The Poetry/Rare Books Collection, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1993, n.p.

                                                                    I

là dedans
        regardez là dedans                                                         ils ont les leurs
ce que ne pouvait pas être vu                                 la pensée dégoutante
une fois enfin                                                                  et dans l’événement regardez
                                                                                                      son temps
ils confèrent l’objet sur mon
le mien a été exploité
               en rappelant ceux qu’on ne peut pas voir
ceux rattachés au temps et à la cage thoracique                   ainsi ses mains soulevées  
leurs vies toujours vibrantes
                                                 saisissaient du temps de l’intérieur la seule
 chronologie du temps de sang                           sujet chronique
                                                                                          la fondation saisie
le temps de l’intérieur étant à vous et à moi
sans cadran                                          qui voyait                                         la cage
                                           courbé écarté pour atteindre
                                               le passage sans faire un numéro
les mains là dans le non-vu
                                                          comme un entraineur propriétaire calme vidé
assommé                               pour nous                                        de notre
pour garder l’unique temps                    
                                                                          à l’intérieur
chassé                                                      pour quand les organs  à l’extérieur
                                                                                      voient l’extérieur une fois de plus
le vrai temps dévidait puis s’enroulait
                            pendant un certain temps n’étant pas réel 


                            encore l’extérieur n’est pas visible
de nouveau après l’intrusion dans le seul sacré
                                                     les rouges sacs du temps là-bas ramenés et remis   
dans l’esprit
                                    rappelés à l’esprit
                                                                      pour se soucier de votre temps
pourrait être filmé et vu de façon non-réel le temps réel
                                                                  les images chaque seconde
                                                                  sous la rétine trembloté
                                                                  déjà vu auparavant comme la fin du réel
un passé dans la bobine                                  avec des agents de conservations 
dès ce moment où ce que s’éclata
                                                       l’amour               les poèmes d’amour
                                                       les éclatements de peur 
                                                       les découverts depuis des sacs du temps
                                                       des pulsations et ce que s’était passé se déroule
le grand secret répété devant nous
                                                                       la machine déclencha
                                                                       ces moments à nouveau
les vraies scènes         les moments intimes mutuels.     tout ce que vous pouvez



(c) T. Wignesan - Paris,  2017
Copyright © | Year Posted 2017


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