d'Air Triste

Guy Jean



Le Trio Pantango joue air triste / soledad, Piazzolla au bandonéon
je danse
ma partenaire colle à mon ventre sa tristesse
d'espoirs trompés, de travail bête, de rêves incolores

tristesse des terres lointaines, de toute la Terre
longue comme exil et errance
vieille comme la mort toujours la mort précoce, subite, qui tarde à venir.

Les animaux oublient, vivent, meurent.

Danse femme, dansons un air triste
qui laisse en nous les traces furtives d'un animal sur la rosée
les empreintes angéliques de l'oiseau de proie dans la neige fraîche.





 

Le bois cordé avec soin expose au soleil ses moignons.
À l'hiver il nous réchauffera de son feu.

De même, mon amour aura-t-il sur tes blessures
le parfum du bouleau blanc?

Ton amour, trop dense, ne se digère pas
il entre dans les os
s'installe comme un gardien de nuit
prend la forme de ce qu'il voit.

Femme, bois mes cendres.
Je veux mourir mon éternité en ton corps.







Mes pas s'accordent aux odeurs des amours
je pose la main sur ses hanches
les rythmes sauvages du coït y résonnent encore

je lève le regard
crâne sans yeux ni lèvres
dents ouvertes sur le vide
cœur glacé.

Tango mortuaire
mes pas s'enfoncent sous terre.

Read the English translation

Listen to the poems read in the original French by the author:

Working with the musically and syntactically complex French brings up numerous differences between French and English that create obstacles as well as opportunities for creative movement. In Guy Jean's French-Canadian poems, verb tenses shift (or seem to) from present to future to past without our linear American-English logic. Gendered nouns and pronouns—such as "le bois cordé" or "cordwood," later referred to as "il," the masculine pronoun for "he"—build the possibility of anamorphous metaphors and a potential for personified strangeness in English. French uses "ne . . . pas" to negate verbs, which physically splits the negation, resulting in a construction that does not exist in English. Additionally, there are false cognates and unanticipated resonances across words: "crâne"  (n. skull) and "crâner" (v. to show off) must be negotiated like stepping stones across a river.

The translator must balance being creative with being faithful to make the poem work in English. With the lines "dents ouvertes sur le vide / cœur glacé," a literal translation risks a cliché in English: "teeth open over the empty, / frozen heart." Toying with syntax, "open over the void teeth / of a frozen heart" aims to keep some of the edge removed in translation. The order of adjectives paired with nouns, too, is different. "Tango mortuaire" translates as "mortuary tango," but we can keep the French order by using "Tango of the mortuary" or "Tango of the morgue," which create a metaphor and a stronger effect in English.

Finally, French has reflexive verbs, such as "s'achève" ([it] ends itself); but there is also, "je me sors," which means, "I leave" (not "I leave myself"). "Tu me manques" means "I miss you," but a more literal translation would be, "you are missing from me," which has far vaster poetic implications in English. It is often these seeming traps or dead ends between languages that turn into trap doors and portals, unexpectedly transporting the reconstruction of syntax into an experience of art.

Guy Jean resides in Gatineau, Quebec, where he is much involved in the development and promotion of literature. He collaborates in creative and translation projects with artists and poets in Quebec, USA, and Europe. He is the author of eight books of poems, all published in Québec. English translations of his poems have appeared widely in magazines and journals in the US, and have been published as a chapbook, If I Were Born in Prague, by Argos Books and as a collection, Mourning Ploughs the Winter, by Marick Press.

Jen Lagedrost is a poet, writer, and translator who grew up on an organic vegetable farm in rural Ohio. Her poems and reviews appear in Pleiades, Stone Highway Review, Midwestern Gothic, the San Diego Poetry Annual, Minerva Rising, and the poetry anthology Bearers of Distance, among others. She is a contributing editor at Poetry International and HINGED: Journal of Converging Arts.

Catherine Fagan hails from Southborough, Massachusetts. She is a poet, writer, translator, and teacher of rhetoric and writing. She has been a submission reader for the Cider Press Review and a contributing editor at Poetry International.