The Berlin Wall, or Blackberry Picking in Western Brittany (excerpt)
The great glut of potato bugs is how I think of this garden overturned wheelbarrow lessiveusebeneath a structure of flying colors the laundry line coated in goldoh sweet therapist from hutch to coopsince the path with a view of the sea I have a neurosis at heartin times of mass productiondesire devours censure austerity of yesterdaydisparate dreams which is their specialty sorrow commandsit’s a bad bargainit’s a tale that begins among flies pylons and postsreceive the calls the town embodies the ironynow they are accomplished prophecies damned damned countrytricks the blue skytricks death in dreams come closer she says the little urchin swappedfor the excellence of ire and furymidway through the cabbages our shadow growsa shadow made of cabbages from ker to here subjecting the pathto our channeled words minimum of space angry gesturesagainst an infamous dualism walking in spirit through the cabbages doesn’t get my feet less wetI write to soak my feet among the cabbagesladybugs of memory the bounding of lessiveuses the swallows like affect here and there I amaffected by what’s inert in language I speak with the backdropof capitalist deploymentnow irresistible in a country by the seataking to the pedals against the wind you spit out your soul it hits you right on the mouth. Note: A lessiveuse is a precursor to the washing machine. It was operated by hand, and a fire or hot coals heated the water.
de “Le Mur de Berlin ou La Cueillette des mûres en Basse-Bretagne”
La grande année des doryphores est ce qui donne mon sense à ce jardin brouette retournée lessiveuseet soutenant une construction de couleurs qui volent la corde de linge gainée d’orah douce thérapeute du clapier au poulaillerdepuis le chemin d’où on voit la mer j’ai la névrose au coeuren des temps de production en massele désir dévore la censure austérité de la veilledisparate du rêve dont c’est la spécialité la tristesse ordonnec’est un marché de dupesc’est un histoire qui commence parmi les mooches pylons et poteauxreçoivent les appels le bourg fait corps avec l’ironiemaintenant que les prophéties sont accomplies maudit maudit paysruse avec le ciel bleuruse avec la mort dans les rêves approche dit-elle la pauvrette suppléeà l’excellence du courroux et de la fureurchemin faisant dans les choux notre ombre augmenteune ombre fait des choux de ker à ker soumettant la marcheà nos mots canalisés minimum d’espace gestes de colèreà l’adresse d’un dualisme infâme marcher mentalement dans les choux ne trempe pas moins les piedsj’écris pour me mouiller les pieds dans les chouxcoccinelles mnésiques lessiveuses bondissantes les hirondelles comme l’affect ici et là je suisaffecté par l’inerte dans la langue je parle sur la fond de déploiement du capitalismdésormais irresistible en pays du bord de merdressé sur les pédales contre le vent tu craches ton âme tu la reçois en pleine gueule
Feature Date
- February 8, 2021
Series
- Translation
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Excerpted from TRISTE TRISTAN AND OTHER POEMS: Translated by Laura Marris and Rosmarie Waldrop.
Published by Burning Deck Press, 2017.
Copyright © 2017 by Laura Marris.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Paol Keineg writes poetry and plays, mostly in French, but also in Breton and English. Over the course of his career, he has written twenty-two books, most recently Johnny Onion Descend de son vélo (2019). He has translated several English-language poets into French, including Rosmarie Waldrop, Charles Bernstein, Keith Waldrop, and William Bronk. In 1974, he left Brittany for the US where he lived for thirty-five years. He received a Ph.D. from Brown University, and has taught at various universities, including Dartmouth, Brown, and Duke. He returned to live in Brittany in 2009. His recent publications include Des proses qui manquent d’élévation (2018), Mauvaises Langues (2014), and Abalamour (2012). Mauvaises langues won the Prix Max Jacob in 2015.
Matt Kenyon
Laura Marris is a writer and translator. Her poems and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Times, The Believer, The Yale Review, The Volta, The Common and elsewhere. Her work has been supported by a MacDowell Colony Fellowship and a Daniel Varoujan Award. Recent translations include Paol Keineg’s Triste Tristan (with Rosmarie Waldrop), Geraldine Schwarz’s Those Who Forget, and Louis Guilloux’s Blood Dark, which was shortlisted for the 2018 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She teaches creative writing at the University at Buffalo and is currently at work on a new translation of Albert Camus’s The Plague.
Keineg’s poems began somewhere between song and angry scream. In his later years, they have given a larger place to humor, irony, and more nuanced language nourished by his living between three tongues: Breton, French, and English. When “all languages are always foreign” it is impossible to have a naive, unreflected relation to any one of them — or to their literatures.
Triste Tristan quilts early medieval versions of “Tristan and Iseult” together with a demythologizing perspective that “takes down the pants of the lyrical tradition.” Other poems layer the landscapes of Brittany and America with meditations on history, writing, memory, and exile. The work is both immersed in physical space and displaced by it.
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
