André ne connais pas la dame
Qu'il prend aujourd'hui par la main.
A-t-elle un cœur à lendemains,
Et pour le soir a-t-elle une âme?
Au retour d'un bal campagnard
S'en allait-elle en robe vague
Chercher dans les meules la bague
Des fiançailles du hasard?
A-t-elle eu peur, la nuit venue,
Guettée par les ombres d'hier,
Dans son jardin, lorsque l'hiver
Entrait par la grande avenue?
Il l'a aimée pour sa couleur,
Pour sa bonne humeur de Dimanche.
Pâlira-t-elle aux feuilles blanches
De son album des temps meilleurs?
Je ne peut plus rien dire
Ni rien faire pour lui.
Il est mort de sa belle
Il est mort de sa mort belle
Dehors
Sous l'arbre de la Loi
En plein silence
En plein paysage
Dans l'herbe.
Il est mort inaperçu
En criant son passage
En appelant
En m'appelant.
Mais comme j'étais loin de lui
Et que sa voix ne portait plus
Il est mort seul dans les bois
Sous son arbre d'enfance.
Et je ne peux plus rien dire
Ni rien faire pour lui.
En allant se coucher le soleil
Se reflète au vernis de ma table:
C'est le fromage rond de la fable2
Au bec de mes ciseaux de vermeil.
_ Mais ou est le corbeau? _ Il vole.
Je voudrais coudre mais un aimant
Attire à lui toutes mes aiguilles.
Sur la place les joueurs de quilles
De belle en belle3 passent le temps.
_ Mais où est mon amant? _ Il vole.
C'est un voleur que j'ai pour amant,
Le corbeau vole et mon amant vole,
Voleur de cœur manque sa parole
Et le voleur de fromage est absent.
_ Mais où est le bonheur? _ Il vole.
Je pleure sous le saule pleureur
Je mêle mes larmes à ses feuilles
Je pleure car je veux qu'on me veuille
Et je ne plais pas à mon voleur.
_ Mais où donc est l'amour? _ Il vole.
Trouvez la rime à ma déraison
Et par les routes du paysage
Ramenez-moi mon amant volage
Qui prend les cœurs et perd ma raison.
Je veux que mon voleur me vole.
Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant
Doux comme un gant de peau glaçée
Et mes prunelles effacées
Font de mes yeux des cailloux blancs.
Deux cailloux blancs dans mon visage,
Dans le silence deux muets
Ombrés encore d'un secret
Et lourds du poids mort des images.
Mes doigts tant de fois égarés
Sont joints en attitude saint
Appuyées au creux de mes plaintes
Au nœud de mon cœur arrêté.
Et mes deux pieds sont les montagnes,
Les deux derniers monts que j'ai vus
A la minute où j'ai perdu
La course que les années gagnent.
Mon souvenir est ressemblant,
Enfants emportez-le bien vite,
Allez, allez ma vie est dite.
Mon cadavre est doux comme un gant.
Couple amoureux aux accents méconnus
Le violon et son joueur me plaisent.
Ah! j'aime ces gémissements tendus
Sur la corde des malaises.
Aux accords sur les cordes des pendus
A l'heure où les Lois se taise
Le cœur, en forme de fraise,
S'offre à l'amour comme un fruit inconnu.
Fleurs promises, fleurs tenues dans tes bras,
Fleurs sorties des parenthèses d'un pas,
Qui t'apportait ces fleurs l'hiver
Saupourdées du sable des mers?
Sable de tes baisers, fleurs des amours fanées
Les beaux yeux sont de cendre et dans la cheminée
Un cœur enrubanné de plaintes
Brûle avec ses images saintes.
1The title "Il vole" is ambiguous, meaning both "He flies" and " He thieves."
2Refering to the fable by La Fontaine "Le corbeau et le renard."
3The word belle, meaning beauty, also has the meaning of a tie-breaking game.
André doesn't know the lady
he is taking today by the hand.
Has she a heart for tomorrows,
and, for the evening, has she a soul?
Returning from a country ball
was she leaving in a flowing dress
to search in the haystacks for the ring
of the betrothal of chance?
Had she been frightened, when, night having come,
watched by yesterday's shadows,
in her garden, as winter
was entering by the wide avenue?
He had loved her for her colour,
for her good Sunday disposition.
Will she fade upon the white pages
of his album of better days?
I can say no more
nor do anything for him.
He died of his beautiful one
he died of her beautiful death
outside
beneath the tree of Law
in complete silence
in the wide countryside
in the grass.
He died unnoticed
shouting out his passage
calling out
calling out for me.
But as I was far from him
and that his voice would carry no more
he died alone in the woods
beneath the tree of his childhood.
And I can say no more
nor do anything for him
While setting off to set, the sun
reflects in the varnish of my table:
it is the circular cheese of the fable
in the beak of my silver scissors.
But where is the crow? It flies.
I should like to sew but a magnet
draws all my needles to it.
On the square the skittle players
pass the time from one beauty to the next.
But where is my lover? He flies.
I have a thief for a lover,
the crow flies and my lover thieves,
thief of hearts breaks his word
and the thief of cheese is missing.
But where is happiness? It flies.
I weep beneath the weeping willow
I mingle my tears with its leaves.
I weep for I want to be desired
and I do not appeal to my thief.
But where then is love? It flies.
Find the rhyme to my loss of reason
and along the pathways of the landscape
bring me back my flighty lover
who takes hearts and looses my reason.
I want my thief to steal me.
My corpse is as soft as a glove
soft as a glove of glacé kid
and my hidden pupils
make white pebbles of my eyes.
Two white pebbles in my face,
in the silence two mutes
still shaded by a secret
and burdened by dead weight of images.
My fingers, so often gone astray,
are joined in a devout posture
leaning on the hollow of my laments
on the tangle of my still heart.
And my two feet are the mountains,
the two last hills that I saw
at the moment when I lost
the race that the years win.
My memory resembles this,
children, bear it quickly away,
go, go, my life is done.
My corpse is as soft as a glove.
Loving couple with unrecognized accents
the violin and its player please me.
Ah! I like these wailings drawn out
upon the cord of discomforts.
To the chords on the ropes of the hanged
at the hour when Laws fall silent
the heart, in the form of a strawberry,
offers itself to love like an unknown fruit.
Promised flowers, flowers held in your arms
flowers sprouting from the parentheses of a step,
who brought you these flowers in winter
dusted with the sand of the seas?
Sand of your kisses, flowers of withered loves
the beautiful eyes are of cinder and in the chimney
a heart wrapped in the ribbons of laments
burns with its holy images.
© translated by Christopher Goldsack
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