Paradise

Ariane Dreyfus

                                             —To Dominique Hervieu

               Snowing so truly!

                                             *

               Dancer,
               I always lay this word on what's about to sink.
               Quickly, feet!

               She comes in one body.

               Stage otherwise empty, strong blue.

               We rip it through music.

               The young drum smells of skin.

                                             *

               Sweater over head,
               I smiled because she smiled

               When Dominique entered the studio
               I had forgotten that somebody—
               She is.

               In socks, work starts gently but the pain hides already.
               Right away, pain elsewhere.

               Even closing your eyes: a live body.

               Fold in your chest, and back.
               My memory sinks almost painfully but by one shoulder, the dance draws you again. From one place moves places

               Where you go, a space:
               Your spine is its free wonder.

               For motion to exist, one must have gotten into it: you touch your nape briefly to show how.

               Tears stay inside their eyes
               Because you embellish the edges wildly
               —Now I'm but a window—
               Inside you are cherries
               Not visible but not gone

               Or sharing your thoughts so well
               —What I can hear is more beautiful
               than writing it—
               With feet never at rest
               Even in hands
               (They open always, discussion on the floor)

               Dominique Hervieu starts dancing again to explain years of work. We are suddenly silent. No church, no church will ever do it

               That dizziness filled with hope

               Then she sits back down
               Time for redness under the eye.

                                             *

               Snow, no more point in seeing it.


translated from the French by Elias Simpson and Corinne Noirot

Read the original in French

Listen to the poem in the original French read by Corinne Noirot:

Ariane Dreyfus (b. 1958) has published several books of poetry, most recently La lampe allumée si souvent dans l'ombre (José Corti, 2013), Nous nous attendons (Le Castor Astral, 2012), and La terre voudrait recommencer (Flammarion, 2010). "Paradise" is from Les compagnies silencieuses (Flammarion, 2001).

Elias Simpson tried to grow up in Iowa, where he now lives after his MFA stint at Virginia Tech. Recent poems appear in or are forthcoming from Cold Mountain Review, Interim, Painted Bride Quarterly, Blue Fifth Review, and H_NGM_N. He is chief of the online art journal, Toad. More of his and Corinne Noirot's translations of Ariane Dreyfus can be found in InTranslation, from The Brooklyn Rail.

Corinne Noirot is a French native fascinated by the English language since she was twelve. She is Assistant Professor of French at Virginia Tech. She holds a lifelong love of foreign tongues, voice, thought, rhythm, and the written word. Her scholarship covers Renaissance literature and French poetry across the centuries.