Potomitan

Site de promotion des cultures et des langues créoles
Annou voyé kreyòl douvan douvan

Inventory of the Poet
to his sleeping Son

Saint-John Kauss

To Jodd

"Ô grammarian in my verses!
Do not seek the path, Seek the center!
Measure, understand the space between these two loners."
 (Paul Claudel)

I also know a bleeding star in his blue grip
Where the reflections of pain
splash unto me each time the day ends
(Roland Giguère)

MARITOU (Marie Thérèse Dupoux). © Galerie Nader

MARITOU

 1.
and yet
you are the star in my verses
which keeps my words
barely spelled

2.
You are the other side of what I belong to
to women craziness
and the uncertainty of the oldest dreams

3.
and have I loved you as a syllable of hope
such an amulet for me to describe
as a marjoram  in my lost memories

4.
my words to you are made of
rosemary coriander and valerian ink
between two drops of dew rose and citoin
between two consonants and a weakened vowel
my words have a story that makes cry indeed

5.
you're the only begotten Son of so much love
of so many errors seen by twisted eyes 
you're injured child in the shadow of the lines of my hand

6.
you are the outcome of my split nights
the exit to my new odyssey in the silt of hearts
you're the bird vowed to the fragility of the bee on a leash

7.
as long as there is my heart to the left to love
as long as there is my arm to the right to work with gestures of a man
as long as you and I will draw on a blank sheet
the melancholy of a star and the obsession of covetous spheres

8.
as long as there are men and women to learn to live again
we will be two to straddle the torrent of life
to unfold the clover wallpaper on the bed of the oceans
but we will make just one left alone in the coldness of this country
seeking the shadow between us two loners

9.
Don’t you speak to my silences when everything is missing
even this poem dedicated to free women in my habits
this beloved woman who no longer reflects this sudden love
the eyes with anemones that no more comfort children

10. don’t you hear your people cry with the butterflies of “la Saint-Jean”
around the armories and facing the lighted lamp
greeting the beloved covered with kisses

11.
high towers of my childhood that the vagaries of the hourglass have erased
high houses put aside for revolution and poetry
your innocent poetry yet to open its wings still hot
to welcome the stars on a small white horse

12.
yet you are
a long cry of hope conceived in the pain
of your so sad eyes

13.
you are the other side of what I belong to
at the tread of men and the waves without vanity
the unity in my habits of a naked man in front of his words

14.
and have I loved you in the basin with my so indolent hopes
a ripe fruit offered with no regret
and as a violoncello wounded at the edge of failure

15.
and tired of calling you while bandaging my wounds
I today seek my words of premonition
my words which however make the alabaster cry
my words watching the margins and the geography
of the poem of the words
and of my evils uncontested
on the whole page

lotus

Traduction de Joelle Constant

du poème

Inventaire du poète à son fils endormi

boule

Viré monté