Alain Bosquet: Three poems translated by William Jay Smith

American Poetry Review, The, Jul 1995 by Bosquet, Alain

When I'm No Longer Around

When I'm no longer around,

this republic will still have the same president,

the same voters

with equal rights a the polling booth,

whether dogs or foxes.

When I'm no longer around,

summer will begin in June,

and the moon will be as fat

as a pumpkin

and zero will roll off into the snow.

When I'm no longer around,

my street will be quite dirty,

my village quite ugly,

and my river filthy

as it was yesterday, as it is today.

When I'm no longer around,

the Memorial to the dead

will be proud of its soldiers

fallen for a forgotten,

a disavowed, curse.

When I'm no longer around,

prose will be soft

as an egg sunnyside-up,

as a lover's vow without lovers,

and poetry

will lose its meaning.

When I'm no longer around,

this world will be just as it is now with me still here.

Loose Leaves

Dust will never cover these pages.

Whether I am dead or alive,

a wind will stir them;

and, if need be, they will fly

over the mountain

and settle on some migrating tribe.

A prince or a horse thief

will pluck them like water lilies;

then a prophet will have them translated.

They will take on a new meaning

and children among the stones will blush

to absorb them,

or else to modify them so they may become younger,

whiter,

purer,

more ruthless.

An Ordinary Day

I am a gentleman turning gray,

who, in the morning, gets rid of his dreams

that were swarming

with fire-eating reptiles.

He greets his spouse as if to say,

"I have no memory of our love-making."

He weighs himself, shaves,

punches the bags under his eyes.

He drinks his naked tea;

his laziness wipes off his skeptical smile.

He throws his mail in the trash can.

He telephones at random,

not knowing to whom:

"Pardon me, Madam,

I've heard on good authority

that you will die tomorrow."

He dusts off the furniture.

Unseen, he spits

on his poems.

If he had a canary,

he would tear off its feathers.

A new book of Alain Bosquet's poems, God's Torment, translated from the french by Edouard Roditi, was recently published by Ohio University Press. A novel, A Russian Mother, translated by Barbara Bray, was recently published by Holmes & Meier.

These translations are part of a volume of Bosquet's poems, When I'm No Longer Around, translated by James Laughlin, Roger Little, and William Jay Smith, forthcoming this fall from the Dedalus Press in Dublin, Ireland. William Jay Smith also has translations forthcoming in The New Yorker and Poetry.