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    Wings Folded in Cracks:
    Wings Folded in Cracks:
    Wings Folded in Cracks:
    Ebook204 pages1 hour

    Wings Folded in Cracks:

    By Jean-Pierre Vallotton

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    About this ebook

    Where other poets of his generation developed strategies of deconstruction, Jean-Pierre Vallotton invented a brave new mosaic with the parameters left behind by traditionalism, modernism and postmodernism. If William Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot are considered decadent, then so is Jean-Pierre Vallotton a decadent; however, the sort of decadent that will be viewed as being great in years to come: “The space between us is a path of magnificence, and here the faintest of our footsteps draws forth a flower.” His neo-baroque poetry stands at the crossroads of whatever styles, forms, and contents led to this spot; and it is with the pernicious artefacts found here that Jean-Pierre Vallotton invents the unknown structures that will welcome the birds of paradise of tomorrow.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGuernica
    Release dateMay 5, 2013
    ISBN9781550717976
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      Book preview

      Wings Folded in Cracks: - Jean-Pierre Vallotton

      Wings Folded in Cracks:

      Selected Poems

      Jean-Pierre Vallotton

      Bilingual Edition

      Translated from the french by Antonio d’Alfonso

      Guernica Essential Translations Series 14

      Contents

      Il neige des cendres...

      It is snowing ashes...

      Témoins enfouis

      Buried Witnesses

      Suicide à bon marché...

      A dirt-cheap suicide...

      Visage étoiles absentes

      Face Absent Stars

      Rappel

      Another Call

      Eperdument...

      Frantically. . .

      Posthume

      Posthumous

      La chambre...

      The room...

      Tout cela brûlera

      All of this will burn

      Précédemment

      Previously

      Déconcertée

      Disconcerted

      Esquisse de Gisabel

      Sketch of Gisabel

      Images pour Sulamith Wülfing

      Images for Sulamith Wülfing

      Lumière d’automne

      Autumn Light

      Miroir aux alouettes ou De l’art moderne / Un chevet de mousse

      Mirror for the Skylark or On Modern Art / The bed head

      En cette attente admirable

      The Admirable Wait

      Suicides familiers...

      Colloquial suicides...

      Paulina 1980

      Paulina 1980

      Voyageur arrêt

      The Traveller Stops

      Couteau tiré de lumière... / Pour voir s'eteindre

      Knife pulled out of the light... / In order to see lightning

      Réveil à Arzier

      Waking up in Arzier

      Espère

      Hope

      Noir sur blanc

      Black on white

      Aux yeux des trépassés...

      On the stare of the deceased...

      Musée privé Rêves partagés

      Private Museum Shared Dreams

      Sommeils de givre Sommeils de plomb

      Frost Sleep Lead Sleep

      Reliefs d’un automne

      Autumn Embossments

      Cinglante averse...

      Rainfall stings...

      A un tremblement près.../ En braille...

      With the quivering... / Music in braille...

      Six mélodies à l’unisson

      Six Melodies in Unison

      Barcelona

      Barcelona

      Femmes surréalistes

      Surrealist Women

      L’autre rive

      The Other Shore

      La joie sous son archet... / Aux rides pales de l'hiver

      The bow resonates with joy... / On the wrinkles...

      Déclivité tranchante de l’averse... / Le miroir s'arrete...

      The razor-thin rainfall slices... / The mirror comes...

      Les biens de ce monde

      This World’s Fortune

      L’amour de l’autre

      Love for the Other

      Ce que l’on nomme espoir

      What We Consider Hope

      Renaître, fardeau...

      To be reborn, burden...

      Insectes

      Insects

      La glace fond...

      Ice is melting...

      Suite parisienne

      Parisian Suite

      Arrêt sur image...

      Freeze frame...

      Renvenimer la plaie..

      Pouring venom on wounds...

      Le retour l’attente

      The Return The Waiting

      After Jean-Pierre Vallotton’s Words

      About the Author and Translator

      By the Same Author

      Praise

      Copyright

      Il neige des cendres...

      Il neige des cendres dans ma tête. Des cendres froides comme l’hiver qui n’en finit pas de geler ses arbres et ses étangs. Arbres malades, étangs de larmes sans reflet. La nuit craquelée. Epaisses gerçures aux lèvres de la terre étouffée. Sourde étoffe de cris. Un matin chancelle après l’autre. A ronger les portes condamnées, les doigts brisent les plumes, le vide s’installe, triomphant.

      It is snowing ashes...

      It is snowing ashes in my head. Ashes as cold as winter, freezing over trees and ponds. Sick trees, ponds of tears without reflection. Night cracks. Chapping thick on the lips of the earth, suffocating. Yells of muffled fabric. Mornings totter into one another. Nibbling at the locked door, fingers bend pens in two, emptiness, triumphant, sits on its throne.

      Témoins enfouis

      Les voiles tièdes d’avril qui se disperse et la pâleur des platanes sanglés de fer imposant. Tu disais – tu ne disais rien. Un instant, haut-relief d’oiseaux sculptés, séculaires, sous la corniche d’un toit; un instant, vol de pigeons réincarnés, bruissants, et façade nue, violente. Tu pensais – pas même, voguais, absente. Simples jeux d’enfants avides sur la place, extase, brumeuse cathédrale de cris fermés. Le banc glissait pour nous, figés, dans l’oubli de l’heure chaleureuse, peut-être dans la pluie réfractée du bassin, jet d’eau silencieux, incompris. Tu disais – rien. Le jour plein parlait, vivait pour nous, présents témoins enfouis.

      Buried Witnesses

      The damp April mist evaporated; blood-iron plane trees, imposing, fading. You were saying, you were saying nothing. A pause. The high relief of sculpted secular birds on the cornices of a rooftop. Another pause. Reincarnated pigeons in flight, a hum, bareness of a façade, violence. You were thinking – not even, you were wandering, absent. Simple games children played avidly in the piazza. Ecstasy. Cathedral of prisoner screams in the fog. A bench, slippery, just for us, motionless, forgotten in the warm hour. Perhaps the rain in the basin resisted, silent spray of water, misunderstood. You were saying. Nothing. The day complete, was speaking, living for us, witnesses present and buried.

      Suicide à bon marché...

      Suicide à bon marché dans ma rue.

      Mais les journaux font silence sur le scandale étroit. Comme toujours le marchand ambulant, avec ses fruits engrossés de soleils artificiels, crie aux quatre vents sa détresse insondable qui se résorbe en « . . . Francs cinquante la livre » , « . . . Si juteux, profitez! » dans sa boutique, le boucher découpe sa solitude en kilos, en tranches, en gigots; son cœur saigne par toutes ces viandes sous vitrine exposées sans pudeur; couteau qui valse en plein sentiment. A grandes envolées de balai, une concierge sans âge, éternelle en son église de comédie, chasse du trottoir les débris de son imaginaire nuit insensée; et pas un mot aux voisins du fantasque qui d’un pas décisif s’est effacé du plan du quartier. Les volets, comme toujours, bâillent en s’éveillant à l’appel du soleil insolent; les arbres indifférents vaquent à leur silence; les rues en résonnant de leur habituel fatras comblent à l’avance le vide qu’elles ne soupçonnent pas.

      ... à bon marché dans ma rue.

      Quel est ce mort inconnu qui me ressemble déjà?

      A dirt-cheap suicide...

      Suicide dirt-cheap on my block.

      But newspapers keep quiet about the scandal. It’s the same routine. The travelling salesman with fruit fathered by artificial suns shouts to everyone his deep distress with such words as fifty cents a pound..., juicy. . . Try ’em. . . in his shop, the butcher dices his solitude into kilos, chunks, legs of lamb. His heart is bleeding for all that meat in his window, naked, with no regard to propriety. His knife waltzes in complete joy. The ageless lady janitor, immortalized in the comedy church, sweeps; her broom amply chases from the sidewalk leftovers of her imagined night of silliness. But not a word is mentioned to the residents about the stranger who erased himself from the neighbourhood. The shutters, as usual, yawn awake to the sun insolently calling out. Indifferent, the trees attend to silence. The street echoes another game

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