©Mathilde Bonnefoy, 1990.

 By Béatrice Douvre.

Translated by John Taylor.

◊ 

Farewell to inset words, to glorious words.
Here, a place drunk with blossoming, the enameled field of living. The green water is a face effaced by confines.

Farewell to inset words, to glorious words; the voices change, the sad steeples shift while floating.
Snow in the brown sky.
Snow on the wings—fire.

Adieu aux mots sertis, aux mots de gloire.
Ici, le lieu ivre de floraisons, le champ émaillé de vivre. L’eau verte est un visage qu’effacent les confins.

Adieu aux mots sertis, aux mots de gloire ; les voix changent, les clochers tristes bougent, en flottant.
Neige au ciel brun.
Neige aux ailes feu.

♦

1. Ephemeral Beat

Unheard-of cloud
Boundless like wellspring water
In the changing foliage

The mauve dawn will shift the sky
Clear away the cloud
In sudden beauty

At the bronze dock, where old boats are rusting,
One by one the sails
Rise again
Over there on the other dream

And the cold shroud of my fecundity

1 July 1994
(The arc of the dawn)

Battement éphémère

Nuage inouï
Illimité comme l’eau des sources
Dans la feuillée qui change

L’aube mauve bougera le ciel
Dégagera la nue
En beauté soudaine

À quai de bronze, où rouillent les barques anciennes
Une à une les voiles
Se relèvent
Sur l’autre rêve là-bas

Et le suaire froid de ma fécondité

(L’arc de l’aube)

2.

Words ventured
By he who says me
While time is ending

The foreign trough
From which I drank
Within the belated reflection

Yet I had deciphered the peril, the light
By the mute echo of age-old service trees

I had invented the flute, color
In the water of the vast river
While I was standing
Amid the stuff of visions

2 July 1994

Parole risquée
Par celui qui dit moi
Lorsque le temps s’achève

L’auge étrangère
Où je buvais
Dans le reflet tardif

Or j’avais déchiffré le péril, la lumière
À l’écho sourd des sorbes centenaires

J’avais inventé la flûte la couleur
Dans l’eau du fleuve immense
Debout
Dans l’étoffe des visions

3.

I scattered my steps like seeds to the splendid gates.
The roots of the wind are outside like claws.
I ran to prayerful realities.

The combe imposed itself beneath my vertiginous footsteps.
The gardens were laughing out of fear
Under the gaping water.

My icy hands yesterday
Weary galaxies
Now garden fences leave me indifferent
Fortify me

I watch the trees leaning on the lightning bolt.

4 July 1994

J’ai semé clair mon pas jusqu’aux portes splendides.
Les racines du vent sont dehors comme des griffes.
J’ai couru aux réalités priantes.

La combe s’imposait sous mes pas de vertige.
Les jardins riaient de peur
Sous l’eau béante.

Mes mains glacées hier
Galaxies lasses
Maintenant les grilles des jardins m’indiffèrent
Me fortifient

Je regarde les arbres se pencher sur l’éclair.

4.

Bursts

Laughs
That are shattered

A city of birds
At our feet the harvesting water
Peopled with green
And yellow silts

To our hands
The ribbons of the ancient wind
The hub of the quick
Quick

Adjoining wheel.

5 July 1994

Éclats

Rires
Qui se brisent

Une ville d’oiseaux
À nos pieds les eaux moissonneuses —
Peuplées de limons
Verts et jaunes.

À nos mains
Les rubans du vent antique
Le moyeu de la roue rapide
Rapide

Attenante

5.

It hurts
I am the lightweight stone of the sky
Digging its next step

I watch your night growing
Solar and mystical
Resonant

I want the dried-up earth
In order to set aside my significance

But it’s the painful green water that signs me

6 July 1994

J’ai mal
Je suis la légèreté de la pierre du ciel
Creusant le pas

Je regarde ta nuit grandir
Solaire et mystique
Sonnante

Je veux la terre asséchée
Pour écarter ma signifiance

Mais c’est l’eau douloureuse et verte qui me signe

6.

O missing kiss
Arms hugging me

Rowboats far from shore
Their honey-girded stomachs
For moon scoriae

Open-eyed
Marshes
Willows shifted by a silent
Wind

I recall
Strolling along vaulted woods
And in my heart a freedom

Of fern hands
With undulating tips

7 July 1994

O baiser manquant
Bras qui m’étreignent

Des barques loin du bord
Au ventre ceint de miel
Pour des scories de lune

Marécages
Aux yeux ouverts
Saules bougés d’un vent
Silencieux

Je me rappelle
Une promenade au bord des bois voûtés
Avec au cœur une liberté

Des mains de fougères
Aux terminaisons ondoyantes

7.

We have carried out the simple act of essence
Shattering the fruit of snuffed-out
Robes

Gold was shimmering high in the leaves
We have carried out the act
Of repairing what was torn

But the sea loved us
The lyre of glassware and sunsets
Laying hands on time
We have carried out the simple act
Of growing old

8 July 1994

Nous avons fait le geste simple de l’essence
Brisant le fruit des robes
Éteintes

L’or poudroyait en haut des feuilles
Nous avons fait le geste
De réparer la déchirure

Mais la mer nous aimait
La lyre des verreries et des couchants
Posant les mains sur le temps
Nous avons fait le geste
Simple de vieillir

8.

Under the grand old age of springtime
Water wells up in drops of regret

Resonant bouquets rejoice
And glimmer

But the dwelling bleeds
And its fissure

We have built our lodgings here
On an escarpment of happy days

11 July 1994

Sous le grand âge du printemps
L’eau sourd en gouttes de regrets

Des bouquets sonores exultent
Poudroyants

Mais la demeure saigne
Et sa fissure

Nous avons construit ici notre logis
Sur un escarpement de jours heureux

9.

The countryside is wet with servitude
The nuptial voice borrowed from the stones

A woody hour overwhelmed by love
You exonerate your child’s find

You lie on the drenched path
And feel faint from weeping

Now obscure tears are shining
You accept the immaculate fear of living

12 July 1994

La campagne est mouillée de servage
La voix nuptiale empruntée aux pierres

Heure boisée qu’excède l’amour
Tu innocentes ta trouvaille d’enfant

Tu gis sur le chemin trempé
Et de pleurs tu défailles

Maintenant brille d’obscures larmes
Tu acceptes la peur immaculée de vivre

10.

Dawn sparkles in the grass of vitalities
A ripe breath mixed with human blood

You were walking, reinventing the ground’s stride
As thirst in the new wind

I watch you—you were running
An act haunted by the vow to be born

Near the crosses
That sometimes make deep stones

12 July 1994

L’aube étincelle dans l’herbe des vigueurs
Souffle mûr mêlé du sang des hommes

Tu marchais réinventant le pas du sol comme une soif
Dans le vent neuf

Je te regarde tu courais
Geste habité du vœu de naître

Auprès des croix
Qui font parfois les pierres profondes

11.

Ashen moment of the tottering
Expanse

And our poverty comes to us from the same exile
In time

Growing up has dissipated the only journey
Between the tree and the threshold
Between our hands

From now on it’s the grass that lasts for us
Its gentle blindness under our entrenched footsteps

13 July 1994

Moment cendré de l’étendue
Chancelant

Et notre pauvreté nous vient d’un même exil
Dans le temps

Grandir a dissipé le seul voyage
Entre l’arbre et le seuil
Entre nos mains

Désormais c’est l’herbe qui nous dure
Sa cécité très douce à nos pas retranchés

12.

Harsh naked roads
On which crime strolls
Impregnated with the smells
Of blood, of milk
Whose murmur I know

As to me, walking, worried
About peoples and dances,
Will I be the insane
Fervor of their rhythms

But I don’t know if it is dawn or gold that is bleeding
On the uncertain meadow of the sands

13 July 1994

Âpreté nue des routes
Où le crime se promène
Imprégné d’odeurs
De sang, de lait
Dont je sais la rumeur

Moi qui marche, soucieuse
Des peuples et des danses
Serai-je la ferveur
Insensée de leurs rythmes

Mais j’ignore si c’est l’aube ou l’or qui saigne
Sur le pré incertain des sables

♦

Waiting among the palms
Full of auburn kisses
Whose splendor astonishes

Attente parmi les palmes
Emplies de baisers roux
Dont la splendeur étonne

◊

Note. These “Last Poems,” originally published in Béatrice Douvre’s Oeuvre poétique (Montélimar: Éditions Voix d’encre, 2000) in a slightly different version (and with the title “Sur un sol insensé” [“On an Insane Ground”]), are now included in her Journal de Belfort (Paris: Éditions de la Coopérative, 2019). I have used the latter version for this translation. For the French poems here, ©Éditions de la Coopérative. The reproductions of paintings made by Béatrice Douvre have been provided by Alain Blanc of the Éditions Voix d’encre and with the courtesy of ©Estate of Béatrice Douvre. The photographic portrait of Douvre at the top of this presentation was made by Mathilde Bonnefoy. Photo credit: ©Mathilde Bonnefoy, 1990. This same compelling photo, one of the very rare extant photos of Douvre, can be found on the cover of Journal de Belfort.

About Béatrice Douvre.

Béatrice Douvre (1967–1994) was a poet and artist who passed like a comet through the sky of French literature. At the age of thirteen, she began suffering from anorexia, an affliction against which she would struggle throughout her short lifetime. Despite her illness, she managed to study French literature at the University of Nanterre, where she completed a masters thesis under the direction of her professor, the poet Gabrielle Althen, about “anorexia and orexia in the Rimbaud’s oeuvre,” and then a D.E.A. thesis about “color in Yves Bonnefoy’s poetic oeuvre.” Also under Althen’s supervision, she was engaged in writing a doctoral thesis about Pierre Jean Jouve when she died from exhaustion and a heart attack on a train on 19 July 1994. At the time, she had published only a few poems, beginning in 1991, in various literary reviews, but some three hundred poems were found among her papers, as well as a diary, Journal de Belfort. During her last years, she had also met, and was encouraged by, several important French poets, including not only Althen but also Philippe Jaccottet, Yves Bonnefoy, and Jean-Yves Masson (who, like Althen, played a key role in publishing Douvre’s work and calling critical attention to it). In 2000, the Éditions Voix d’encre issued her collected poems, Oeuvre poétique, with a preface by Jaccottet and an end section devoted to her drawings and paintings. In 2019, the Éditions de la Coopérative published the Journal de Belfort, a journal kept during her last year and distinguished by its visionary erotic prose. Summing up this remarkable output, Masson observes: “Language was the body that she lacked.” This translation of her “Last Poems,” which Douvre began to write within the three weeks preceding her sudden death, represents the first time that her work has appeared in English. With her family’s and her publishers’ permission, I am undertaking the translation of both her journal and her collected poems. (J.T.)

♦

JOHN TAYLOR is a contributing editor of The Fortnightly Review. Two of his books have appeared in the Odd Volumes series: his translation of Philippe Jaccottet’s Truinas, 21 April 2021 and his “double book” co-authored with the Swiss poet Pierre Chappuis, A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges. Among his several books of poetry and poetic prose is Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees (The Bitter Oleander Press). Taylor’s recent translations include two books by Franca Mancinelli, The Butterfly Cemetery: Selected Prose 2008–2021 (The Bitter Oleander Press) and All the Eyes that I Have Opened (Black Square Editions),  as well as Jean Frémon’s Portrait Tales (Les Fugitives), Elias Petropoulos’s Mirror for you: Collected Poems 1967–1999 (Cycladic Press), Philippe Jaccottet’s Ponge, Pastures, Prairies (Black Square Editions) and his La Clarté Notre-Dame & The Last Book of the Madrigals (Seagull Books), and two books by Pascal Quignard: The Unsaddled and Dying of Thinking (also Seagull Books).