The Deception of Free Verse Dreams Ii, Translation of L Imposture Du Vers Libre By Rene Etiemble
The deception of “free verse”: Dreams II, Translation of Etiemble’s “L’imposture du vers libre” by T. Wignesan
“Free verse, free not to be verse” – Audiberti
My love is not blue like a lake
my love is not blue like a sky
but red swollen with blood
and of ire
No lapping sounds of oars
playing out a nocturne
Bienne lake or that of Bourget
ever beat out the loping of my heart
My love’s neither blue nor like a lake
nor like a sea of oil
In the cauldron of boiling oil
a witch throws in a thumb
and the formula
My witching love
sputters and bursts out
stinging these busts and this lip
red
Vehement like a she-demon
it dances in a mad whirl
My left temple
wails
with the furious ocean
which rumbles under my pillow
What ships wreck in this sunken heart
still bleeding
of all the hearts it peeled
bleeding bodies of the young girl
And this heart weeps over its deaths
Like those on All Souls’ Day
the old hoary woman weeping
twisted up into wailing somersaults
which pad the cries of skeletons
clinging to rapacious granite
My heart beating on the pillow
muffles the voice of the friend
which begged the evening gone by
“Tell me it’s not over yet!”
And like the ocean cowardly
I collapse into my bed
to better listen to the tolling
of my temples and my heart
a delusionary
song of joy.
Signed: Jean Louverné (pseudonym)
(c) T. Wignesan - Paris, 2014 (Translation
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