Oeuf de Lumière
(Egg of Light)
Chaque jour, j’emploie le dialecte des cyclones
fous. Je dis la folie des vents contraires.
Chaque soir, j’utilise le patois des pluies furieuses.
Je dis la furie des eaux en débordement.
Chaque nuit, je parle aux îles Caraïbes le langage
des tempêtes hystériques. Je dis l’hystérie de la mer en rut.
Dialecte des cyclones. Patois des pluies. Langage
des tempêtes. Déroulement de la vie en spirale.
Every day I employ the dialect of mad cyclones.
I speak the lunacy of contrary winds.
Every evening I use the patois of furious rains.
I say the fury of water is spilling over.
Every night I talk the language of hysterical tempests
to the Caribbean islands. I speak the hysteria of the sea in rut.
Dialect of cyclones.
Patois of rains.
Language of tempests. The unfurling of life spiraling.
Fondamentalement la vie est tension.
Vers quelque chose. Vers quelqu’un.
Vers soi-même. Vers le point
de maturation où se nouent et se dénouent
l’ancien et le nouveau. La mort et la naissance.
Et tout être se réalise en partie dans la recherche de son double.
Recherche qui se confond
à la limite avec l’intensité d’un besoin,
d’un désir et d’une quête infinie.
Fundamentally life is tension.
Towards something. Towards someone.
Towards oneself. Towards the point
of maturing where one ties and unties
the ancient and the new.
Death and birth.
And all beings realize themselves investigating their double.
An inquiry that is confused
at its limit with the intensity of a need,
of a desire and of an infinite search.
Des chiens passent—j’ai toujours eu l’obsession des chiens errants—ils jappent après la silhouette de la femme que je poursuis.
Après l’image de l’homme que je cherche.
Après mon double. Après la rumeur des voix en fuite. Depuis tant d’années. On dirait trente siècles.
Dogs pass by. I have always been obsessed
with wandering dogs–they yap after
the silhouette of a woman I pursue.
After the image of a man I am looking for.
After my double.
After the murmur of voices slipping away. After so many years. One would
say thirty centuries.
La femme est partie. Sans tambour ni trompette. Avec mon cœur désaccordé
L’homme ne m’a point tendu la main. Mon double est toujours en avance sur moi. Et les gorges déboulonnées des chiens nocturnes hurlent effroyablement avec un bruit d’accordéon brisé
The woman has left. Without a drum beat or a trumpet. With my heart opposed.
The man did not offer his hand on the spot.
My double is always ahead of me. And the unbolted throats of evening dogs
howled terribly with the screech of a broken accordeon.
C’est alors que je deviens orage de mots crevant l’hypocrisie des nuages et la fausseté du silence. It is then that I become a storm of words unscooping the hypocrisy of clouds and the false pretense of silence.
Fleuves. Tempêtes. Eclairs. Montagnes.
Arbres. Lumières. Pluies. Océans sauvages
Emportez-moi dans la moelle frénétique de vos articulations.
Emportez-moi!
Il suffit d’un soupçon de clarté pour que je naisse viable.
Pour que j’accepte la vie. La tension. L’inexorable loi de la maturation. L’osmose et la symbiose. Emportez-moi!
Il suffit d’un bruit de pas, d’un regard, d’une voix émue, pour que je vive heureux de l’espoir que le réveil est possible parmi les hommes. Emportez-moi! Car il suffit d’un rien, pour que je dise la sève qui circule dans la moelle des articulations cosmiques.
Rivers. Storms. Lightning. Mountains.
Trees. Lights. Rains. Wild oceans.
Carry me away in the frenetic marrow of your joints. Carry me away.
A sliver of clarity is sufficient so I may be born viable. So that
I accept life. Tension. The inexorable law of maturing. Osmosis and symbiosis.
Carry me away! The sound of a step suffices, of a look, of a muffled voice, so that I might live happily with hope that waking up is possible among men. Carry me away! For a little nothing suffices so that I might articulate the sap that circulates in the marrow of these cosmic joints.
Indran Amirthanayagam writes poetry in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Haitian Creole. He is the author of twenty three books of poetry and poetry in translation, including Origami: Selected Poems of Manuel Ulacia, Blue Window (Dialogos Books) The Migrant States (Hanging Loose Press 2020),Coconuts on Mars (Paperwall, 2019), Uncivil War (Mawenzi House (formerly TSAR), Canada, 2013), and the Paterson Prize-winning The Elephants of Reckoning (Hanging Loose, 1993). Amirthanayagam is a 2020 Foundation for Contemporary Arts fellow in poetry, and a past fellow of the New York Foundation for the Arts, the US/Mexico Fund for Culture, and the MacDowell Colony. He edits The Beltway Poetry Quarterly; curates the reading series Poetry at Beltway Editions, and publishes poetry books with Sara Cahill Marron at Beltway Editions. He serves on the Board of DC-ALT. His blog is http://indranamirthanayagam.blogspot.com
Franketienne is an immense poet, playwright, novelist, and singer. He is Haiti's leading figure in the arts, a living legend,.