One of my favorite poems...
I felt like sharing one of my favorite poems with you tonight from French poet: Julien Gracq - published in 'Poetry' October-November 2000 issue.
From PROSE FOR THE FOREIGN ONE
1.
I haven’t given up counting the days. So many daysbefore you, during which silence lined the streets as if to welcome a great army that was going to save the city. The days you didn’t come, when so much dark-ness fell from my useless hands. But I have known days when you came in like the armful of flowers that onethrows in through the garden door, and sometimes Ibelieved that you only ever left when night had fallen.And there were some days as well, fine long days asknowing as a pair of lowered eyes, when eveningsmoldered inexhaustibly like an ember under the ashes. You are not out of reach forever, and sometimesI have been very close to you. I remember the endingof one day, an island lapped by tenderness. In the high-ceilinged silent room where evening rose like the sea, interminably, love pressed its brow against me, nudging gently, like a wavelet against a rock.
2.
Your life, when you are no longer there, breaksaround me with the treachery of the moonless waves,like an ocean full of snares and surprises around a stranded hull. Because of you I am lost at sea. On thetall phosphorescent wave that breaks against the cliffs of the streets at the moment when lights come on allover town, your scent lingers like the folds of an ensign, like the smell of seaweed and musk on danger-ous seas. You change the signs. You are smooth as ashore offered like a virgin to the tide that has come to her at night. Your purity is indescribable. I love youlike those sacred statues machine-gunned by sand-storms. You only ever came back to me bathed in the sea.
3.
On the wide open sea of my thoughts that followyou and call out to you, there’s the advancing tide ofthe street where your hand is torn from mine as froma riverbank, the street that throws you towards me in the backwash of slammed doors, the street you flow through like a dark thought in sleep, the high tide of the street that muddies your tracks. You trouble mysleep like the going down of a bad moon, like the dream the shipwrecked sailor dreams on a shore where the flood tide gathers strength. You will never be fromhere. In the darkness wrapped in my arms, there is thisother darkness that lifts towards untroubled dawns, itsstars already rising over the sea. My ear against yourheart, in the heart of the night, I lie in wait for a breakin your intent listening, the imperturbable murmur ofthe shell that has known the ocean, I watch, underyour closed lashes, for a spark, returned from a distantstar, the awakening of your hand, as secretive as thehandle of a door.
4.
I’ve walked with you along the paths of the sacredmountain. I had carried you off to my eyrie, that youmight adorn with flowers the hollow pinnacle that only pushes up granite shoots – onto the rockshrouded in the hanging folds of its shrine, that youmight know your love has covered me up – onto thesummit where there is no firm footing to be found, toonly live there leaning on you. I picked a wild iris foryou that was growing among the stones – and the garden was quieter than a convent garden from which we gazed at the sea rising on the shore, and the clouds scudding over the sea: there, I held you tightly in myarms, I recovered as one who drops anchor: rememberthe mild and cloistered day – remember that I love youin peace. Remember that for one day and one whole night I held you against my heart – remember the rockin the middle of the waves – remember if I’ve lost youthat I’m all at sea, calling to you with the muffled sound of the fog-warning bell – that I stand firm andthat I watch over the empty space where you were like this stark rampart that slashes the shore and like these salty stones – remember the closed room and the shutpostern – remember the faithful blood and the well-guarded fortress – remember the bread and the sharednight – remember the archangel that slays the dragon.
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