Cynthia KellyTranslation of Zachary Richard's poem "1er août, Section III (extrait)."
Traduction du poème "1er août, Section III (extrait)" de Zachary Richard.
First of August, Section III
Too much swelter for
August to sprout, the trees
Being pummelled already by the heat of July.
Their leaves, rolling-paper yellow,
Whiffle groundward to cramp the soil with sparks of life. But
The stouthearted bedpost oaks tower on,
Sheltering the seething chides of suitor cicadas,
As time and again, a spider's silken loom
Casts a protective net through their branches,
And ants dance, stepping lightly in their nightly jitterbug
On summer's last legs.
Like a bird under the leaves, burrowing a berth, I finally get closer to the earth
But only to shade and save this evaporating body.
Eyes burnt by a hollering, livid white sun
I am blighted by flaccid modern-man questions, namely:
How is it that through natural selection and unnatural barbarity
Vain living and shallow deaths, my clinking bones and clotting blood
My squinting eyes, shrinking bollocks and bloated head
Actually made it to this place? I am strapped into sapiens' sapiens' sinews yet
Only just barely bipedal. Christ, I've only just wiped the seaweed off my back.
Still stunned to be a floater in this grand primordial puddle,
I am strapped into pulsing arteries, into the first wisp
Of the very first inkling of my existence, making its first muddled appearance
Mid afternoonish, in the middle of some muddy carriageway
Leaving the countryside of south-west Louisiana
On the road to who knows jack, I am strapped to seeds
Sown from in back and even from in front,
Strapped in, by calamity or twisted fate. I am
A hairless ape, strapped for ideas, aggrieved by my species' conceit,
Relieved and appeased by the abiding beauty of the land,
And these trees.
Read on Wednesday, February 7, 2007 by actor Fred Smith
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