Si blanche
la fleur du câprier
qui s'ouvre avec le jour
si souple sa tige
qui s'appuie sur la roche
moi l'entêtée
je me hisse à l'air libre
m'obstine
à mon épaule
le ciel pend
comme un sac fatigué
*
Déchaussés
maladroits on marche
sur le lourd
le rigoureux
gravier des jours
et pourtant
tous ces blés
l'âpre et mûr citronnier
l'épice fumée du large
appellent
*
Foule en liesse
hautes herbes transparentes
qui s'écartent et se redressent
c'est la soif qui monte
plurielle aérienne
vers l'eau nécessaire
à l'écart
sur un escalier creux
je remplis d'une pluie minime
ma cuillère d'os
*
C'est l'heure où
la poussière descend
se dépose sans bruit
sur les toits sombres
âcre
comme une laine
un lichen
*
Mais elle perdure
la falaise
dressée
et jamais lasse
de tenir en respect
l'espace
au pied de la paroi
par quel miracle
restée debout
l'immense vivier
des vagues
*
Tachée de craie
et de fruits rouille
grand tablier jeté
sur ce ventre de pierre
c'est dans sa pente
ses plis abrupts
que mes larmes aujourd'hui
sévères dans la nuit claire
une à une
retournent
de Gravier
José-Flore Tappy
José-Flore Tappy's subtle lyricism affects the overall impression given by these short simple poems that are ultimately quite complex. Her verse is structured around studied effects of rhythm, assonance, and consonance, as well as around syntactic ruptures that contribute to the oft-acute emotions that she invokes. Whenever I asked the poet questions about semantic nuances in such and such a line during my work on this translation, she would reply precisely but also sometimes add, while underlining similar vowels or consonants, that her "search for sounds" was as important as her search for meaning. She encouraged me to take liberties with sense—and I have taken a few. Semantic resonance—a mainstay of French poetry of this kind—and even some semantic double-layering—note the numerous enjambments—are carefully arranged in her poetry; but it is also true that sound moves the poems along as much as do line breaks, truncated word order, and tantalizingly postponed meaning. I am not sure which comes first, the sound or the semantics, in her initial drafts, but both interact effectively by the end of her labors. An equilibrium is reached, and this goal and notion are central to her poetry for other reasons as well. Given the differences between French and English in this regard, I have tried to give an impression of Tappy's music by paying special attention to alliteration.
José-Flore Tappy was born in Lausanne in 1954. She is the author of five volumes of poetry and has won two prestigious Swiss literary awards: the Ramuz Prize for Errer mortelle and the Schiller Prize for Hangars. She works as an editor and scholar at the Centre de Recherches sur les Lettres Romandes at the University of Lausanne. In John Taylor's translations, her poetry has appeared in the Antioch Review, the International Literary Quarterly, and Carte Blanche.
John Taylor (b. 1952) is an American writer, critic, and translator. He is the author of twelve collections of stories, short prose, and poetry. As a polyglot literary critic, he has long been a bridge between European literature and English-speaking countries. He translates Modern Greek, Italian, and especially French literature. His most recent translations include books by Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Louis Calaferte, José-Flore Tappy, Pierre Chappuis, Catherine Colomb, Pierre Voélin, and Georges Perros. In 2013, he was awarded the Raiziss-de Palchi Translation Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for his project to translate the poetry of the Italian poet Lorenzo Calogero—a book published as An Orchid Shining in the Hand: Selected Poems 1932–1960 (Chelsea Editions, 2015). His most recent translations are three books by Franca Mancinelli, The Little Book of Passage (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2018), At an Hour’s Sleep from Here (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2019) and The Butterfly Cemetery (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2022), José-Flore Tappy’s Trás-os-Montes (The MadHat Press, 2021), as well as Philippe Jaccottet’s A Calm Fire and Other Travel Writings (Seagull Books, 2019), Patches of Sunlight, or of Shadow (Seagull Books, 2020), and Ponge, Pastures, Prairies (Black Square Editions, 2020).
