Me the infant, Translation of Pierre Emmanuel’s L’Enfant moi by T. Wignesan
The infant a stranger to me who grew up poet
You whom he missed even in his sleep
He who had to disinter himself upon waking
Every day in his quest with increasing effort
He who had not known your breast nor lap
Manically he sought your odour in bed clothes
Sniffed under the covers your sphinge haïr
And searched every bush for your mystic antrum
In vain forgot blackness of breasts in death
More avidly survives the memory of your milk
Longer I live more the haunting infant pleases me
When the eternel Night projects her by the threshold
At death the infant’s visited by the maternal shadow
Dissociated as two blue perfect globular moons
Note : Original rhyme schème of sonnet :
abba cddc effe gh)
( from Sophia, O.C. t. II, p. 348)
© T. Wignesan – Paris, October 15, 2014
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