THESE PEOPLE, IT’S SIMPLE,
they’re like creases in reality, folds found
in rocks, bulges on tree trunks, these strange
bodies wound the pupil of my eye, forcing me to look.
We do not roam on the surface of the world, we do not
fall back to earth like slag, we are
its pleats, ravines. People are seen walking,
naked as if just born, from the ends of the earth.
CAN ONE SUFFOCATE
on air, feel filled with soil, and despite everything
take a step, coming into birth, or returning
to nothingness? It is the same exile, the ordinary
transhumance. They are going, but I must,
behind the windowpane, collect myself as well,
to recapitulate unceasingly what holds me upright,
to continue to accompany them with my gaze
which splits.
THE GAZE AGAIN CLIMBS UP
the wall of bushes. The sky is notched
by the summit’s blade. Humans are there,
hoisted, outstretched, crosswalks, time stands still.
They say something, like hinges.
The sky’s door beats on the earth, its eyelid stays
open thanks to them. The twilight, a hesitant light,
asks of beings to relax their grip on the day.
I SEE THE WATER,
the earth also, the sand which makes my windowpane glass,
the swallowed-up wind, all a drift, the overflowing
of one place onto another. The fire takes ill,
in danger of suffocation. Gestures? Candles
snuffed out, a burnt match, tiny short-lived
openings. However, one hand in the other,
two fragments of the same rock, fine tuned.
—
Emmanuel Merle has published twenty-one books of poetry since 2004. He was awarded the Kowalski Prize in 2006 (France), the Prix Théophile Gautier from the Académie Française in 2007, and Prix Rhône Alpes du Livre in 2008. Translation of Merle’s Amère indienne was supported by the PEN America Center and the Service du Livre of the French Embassy in New York City. He teaches literature and is president of l’Espace Pandora.
Jeffrey Jullich has two books of poetry published: Thine Instead Thank (Harry Tankoos Books, 2007) and Portrait of Colon Dash Parenthesis (Litmus Press, 2010). He has been published in various literary journals, including Fence, New American Writing, and Poetry, and has also published translations from the French of Robert de Montesquiou, the “Victor Hugo Ouija” poems, and Francis Picabia. He wrote the libretto for the opera American Lit: The Hawthorne-Melville Correspondence (presented by American Opera Projects) and published and edited the journal LOGOPOEIA.