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    Like the fantastic wind

    Like the fantastic wind
    The wind which takes its shape from swept grass
    Your voice echoes and confuses me
    And its clamor proclaims all I’ve known
    Frenzy, joy and silence and pain
    And my crucified life scattered in time
    Thrown about by your hands to our erased being
    Told by my face and told by your face
    And I remember the regrets
    Those winged monsters of great departures
    Darkening the sky and delivering us the night
    And in their talons taking us to a country
    where we were human
    Standing faceless.

    August 30th, 1943



    On the edge of autumn

    On the edge of autumn
    I reckon like an unlucky gambler
    Misfortune and loneliness rising upon
    Rumor with the wind of equinox
    Which seems to me the very voice of complaint and terror
    A mental winter is dawning
    And flogs us and destroys the pale summer that was
    Overwhelmed in fatality
    And in our lives surrounded by a bird of prey
    Obscured by wings
    Beak with blood
    Myriads of mirrors punctured by larks whose
    Song is no longer recognizable



    I tried the impossible in vain

    To Marthe and Michel

    I tried the impossible in vain
    But it was too late when I came
    There was nothing left
    There was only a sound of wind like a passage
    A dry snap of complaints and muffled words
    There was only a vibrant loneliness
    A frenzied spell of gestures
    And the void that precedes an unseen presence

    I stayed in my stupor listening to the sound of the wind



    If they look for me

    If they look for me
    It’s on a winter morning that I will be found
    A winter morning in the rain
    A morning when life is no longer chance
    But everything remains the same
    The trees, the pavement, the deserted streets
    I will be found in a useless
    Word that doesn’t make sense
    A word which has no reason



    I came to save you from death

    I came to save you from death
    Because you were sad and like me
    Your eyes had widened with fever and your tears flowed
    Down your pale and livid cheeks
    You had played your beauty with contempt
    You had played like I knew how to with life
    And it was a winter evening
    It was a winter night with the snow’s embers and a prostitute on the pavement
    Our love dwindled along with her tenderness
    Reaching the limit of this game whose winner is misfortune
    We were at the pinnacle of our mortal coil
    Our burgeoning desire had burned us like snow

     

    Jacques Prevel (1915–1951) was born in Normandy and lived in the Saint-Germain-des-Près neighborhood of Paris during the German occupation. During his lifetime, Prevel self-released three collections of poetry: Poèmes mortels in 1945, Poèmes pour toute mémoire in 1947, and De colère et de haine in 1950. His diary, En compagnie d’Antonin Artaud, was published posthumously in 1974.

    Caleb Bouchard is a writer and translator. His work (both poetry and prose) has recently appeared in The Atlanta Review, MORIA, Saw Palm, and Thimble Literary Journal. His translations of Jacques Prevel have previously appeared in AzonaL.

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