Heidi Greco
Mots en mouvement/Words on the Move 2007

Traduction du poème "the pear tree" de Lenore Langs.
Translation of Lenore Langs's poem "the pear tree."

The First of August, Part 3 (an excerpt)

It's awfully hot for
the beginning of August, the trees
look exhausted from the heat of July.
The yellowed leaves have spent their strength,
let the last of it to seep back into the earth.
All except for these steadfast oaks:
cool haven to chirping cicadas,
and spiders so busily crafting
their webs. Among these boughs
the ants perform with elegant step,
know they're warming up for summer's finale.

Like the birds, I seek shade
beneath the shelter of these leaves.
Gazing toward the pitiless sun that burns so white
I pose a worn question: how is it that I am here?
Through evolution, persecution,
through life and through death,
my bones, my blood, my eyes, my balls, my head –
I retain part of my ancestors
the first men who walked, the first fish
that swam in watery mud;
conjoined through my arteries to the first hint
of the first idea that bloomed
in the middle of an afternoon on a trail that passed
through the countryside of southwest Louisiana
and ended up (who knows why) here. Linked
by that long chain, seeds sown by my fathers, I see a line extending
behind as far as it looms ahead, as much a case of accident as patterned fate.
Though hot with shame over the swaggering ways of men,
I take solace in the cool simplicity of fields
and some trees.


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