four translations

Tom Hibbard

The Poem Interrupted

– Louis Aragon

Even all alone the bird at the fort

Of the massacre is not you

We robots sing combatively

My beautiful love but where are you

Porters of animals and amphoras

Here come soft and stubborn

The fields of May full of lettuce

like the statues at the church

of saints, pilgrims like “reliefs”

painted from all different perspectives

A season of colors approaches

without force still at the day of its birth

pale wound that the dawn revealed

that a dream in the sky straddles

the night no longer is finished

as in the times of yesteryear that excited you

our disjointed hearts go always ambling

in a springtime always a springtime resembling

without you one only remembers

this springtime as one together

Feeble sun breaks

Sad like a hotel for sale

Like a fire that cannot be restarted

Like a kiss that one cannot return

This morning the curtains drawn out

Here again the haze of Flanders

Our springtime makes wait

The sky simple to comprehend

When we are separated

Why is the air getting tender

What is happiness for all

a thrill the lovers of Verona did not have

What the black sleeping potion that they drink

But to you the glass of azure

The strange trill of my song

Of between the chariots and the armors

It climbs and she is pure enough

To pass above the walls

And the people that we know

O my love O my wound

First Snow

– Antonin Artaud

See so soft, so beautiful, so pale

This day that comes to die above the white secrecy

It seems human to us this dying day

Sadly shedding the petals of these rings in the room.

We feel happy to know that everyone

Drinks just as we do these clothes of clarity

And escapes with us toward the rose clouds…

The hour chimes its toll on the mute stain glass windows.

Branches in the softness of evening lament

Sometimes in the streets a bird cries its last cry

And look the blue sky is melting…

Sister, it is our love that snows in the branches.

To All The Doors

– Philippe Soupault

But it is heavy tonight

And it is slow

This perfume of dry leaves

That every second

Chases and repays

The noise in my head is hard

When each echo

Of that which is distant

Or unknown

Knocks on all my doors

The Air Embalmed

– Louis Aragon

The fruits made out of sand

And birds that have no name

The horses painted like a pennant

And the armor naked but unbreakable

Submit to the unique cannon

Of this spirit that transforms sand

Into the eyes of a hateful time

The bright champaign of cannons

Sing two-word testimonials

Of the beautiful abduction of secrets

That repeat the lyric echo

On the tomb one-thousand regrets

Where sleeps in a mercenary limestone

My sadistic Orpheus, Apollinaire