The men who meet you always lose weight.
No man has defended you and those who have secretly tried,
you halved them at the waist with a sword.
No man has defended you and those who have tried
to hunt the lawless herons of your breasts
with their tongue have forgotten that every
expired phallus believes the breasts of women
emit a sporadic light.
No man has defended you and those
who sped like relentless free-runners
from one hip to the other, you sent them back.
After the inconveniences the limits the remedies,
you sent them back to the burnt-out forge which
they had already passed through. No man
has defended you, has understood from where came
your soft step spreading so much sadness
onto the thick napes of trackers’ necks. No man
has defended you and those who have tried,
while putting on the uniform under their skin,
have demanded you to prepare a place for them
within your naïve body.
And your body would have to wear them just like a tender
apple unwittingly wears its worms.
No man has defended you and those who have tried
were suddenly hiding out in the swimmers’ locker room.
They split into enchanting curls
while repeatedly trying to levitate.
No man has defended you and those who have tried,
under the light of your whip,
of their paralyzed words, were stepping on themselves,
like an elephant on its trunk,
and collapsing into bed. Alone, you raised your brow
and looked towards the dusk,
towards the veiny sky.
No man has defended you. As if
some of them were young boys
still loitering in the urinals.
And the others, old sea wolves who wait for
the winds the fogs the sirens
to light St. Elmo’s fire, like before,
at the top of the masts. No man has defended you
and to those who have looked at you, in their unconsciousness, through
the haze of the ejaculatory calling,
you told them in a thunderous voice that no man
has defended you.
That they had all lain down in the black bed of sense,
blinded and infibulated like in front of
the excised girls from Africa.
And no man has defended you and those who tried
begged you at night and wept at length
onto the ogive of your pelvis. Onto its pink texture,
of chrysoberyl. And you told them
that at this time, in the English park
behind the asylum, the gardener’s daughter was digging
the chest of your lover with her breasts.
You told them that no man had defended you.
And since then, no man has defended you and none have ever even
tried. Because you are hiding your eunuch
under your skin, the pressurized vaginal cube,
and the men who meet you always lose weight.
No man has defended you
Linda Maria Baros
translated from the French by Emily Graham
Listen to the poem read in the original French by the poet:
I’ve had the privilege to translate Linda Maria Baros for a few years now, and while I’m still blown away by her artistry with each poem I read, “Aucun homme ne t’a défendue” left a profound mark—one that I never want rid from me. The poem is a knockout, and it holds all that I love about Baros: her bitingly distinct voice; a gravity in her storytelling; and a twisted web of disconnected images and allusions that somehow unites to poignantly express both her agony and her authority.
“Aucun homme” comes from Baros’s latest collection of poems, La nageuse désossée: Légendes métropolitaines (Le Castor Astral, 2020), and it’s evident that the collection’s title accurately captures the folkloric surreal within this poem (and the collection as a whole). As with the other “metropolitan legends,” “Aucun homme” is a myth where each line is haunted by a shapeshifting, masculine threat that deceives and destroys from whichever body it can incarnate, no matter time or place.
Translating Baros is a difficult but incredibly rewarding challenge. She poeticizes words and phrases that I would never encounter in conversational French (or English, for that matter)—chrysoberyl and St. Elmo’s Fire, to name a few—and many of her metaphors are rooted in a vague clash between metropolitan and militaristic concepts. For my translations of her work, I’ve researched self-compacting concrete, factions of war, the sartorius muscle, and more. It is a literary excavation that I love.
Lastly, I will add that, unlike nageur/nageuse in French, there is no gender-specific word for “swimmer” in English. While my original plan was to translate “les vestiaires des nageuses” as “women’s locker room,” les nageuses are a recurrent symbol in the poem’s collection, so I had to ensure that the swimmer imagery would be present. So, as you read, please know that the swimmers mentioned here are all female.
“Aucun homme” comes from Baros’s latest collection of poems, La nageuse désossée: Légendes métropolitaines (Le Castor Astral, 2020), and it’s evident that the collection’s title accurately captures the folkloric surreal within this poem (and the collection as a whole). As with the other “metropolitan legends,” “Aucun homme” is a myth where each line is haunted by a shapeshifting, masculine threat that deceives and destroys from whichever body it can incarnate, no matter time or place.
Translating Baros is a difficult but incredibly rewarding challenge. She poeticizes words and phrases that I would never encounter in conversational French (or English, for that matter)—chrysoberyl and St. Elmo’s Fire, to name a few—and many of her metaphors are rooted in a vague clash between metropolitan and militaristic concepts. For my translations of her work, I’ve researched self-compacting concrete, factions of war, the sartorius muscle, and more. It is a literary excavation that I love.
Lastly, I will add that, unlike nageur/nageuse in French, there is no gender-specific word for “swimmer” in English. While my original plan was to translate “les vestiaires des nageuses” as “women’s locker room,” les nageuses are a recurrent symbol in the poem’s collection, so I had to ensure that the swimmer imagery would be present. So, as you read, please know that the swimmers mentioned here are all female.
Linda Maria Baros (b. 1981) is a poet, translator, and publisher with a PhD in comparative literature from the Sorbonne University. Baros has published seven books of poetry, including La nageuse désossée. Légendes métropolitaines (The Deboned Swimmer: Metropolitan Legends; Le Castor Astral, 2020), which was awarded the 2021 Grand Prize for Poetry by the Writers’ Society, France, the 2021 International Francophone Prize of the Montréal Poetry Festival and the 2021 Rimbaud Prize of the Poetry House, Paris. Her poems have been published in translation in 41 countries and she has taken part in 98 international poetry festivals. Winner of the prestigious Apollinaire Prize, Baros lives in Paris.
Emily Graham is a writer and translator of contemporary French poetry. From Cleveland, Ohio, she lived in Connecticut for four years before returning to the Midwest, where she is currently an MFA student in literary translation at the University of Iowa. She is the recipient of the 2022 World Literature Today Student Translation Prize in Poetry for her translation of Baros’s poem “Je sors dans la rue avec l’ange.”
