FUITE |
FLIGHT |
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I Dans la brise, dans le vent, Avec les feuilles, l’oiseau, Avec la lune embuant La pelouse de son eau, Avec le murmure Du depart Et la chevelure Du brouillard, Envolons-nous, longs fantomes Au vaporeux vetement, Pales images de l’homme Des bras, des tetes, des hanches Emergent de la fumee Avec des chutes de branches Et des eclairs de ramee. Envolons-nous doucement Montons et tourbillonnons |
I In the breeze, the hiss of wind in the leaves, the red-wing, with the moon blurring the lawn with its watery light, with the murmur of departure and the mist in our hair, let us all ascend, long clothing like whispery ghosts, blade-like images of a man’s arms, head, hips emerging from the smoke with falling branches, lightening and skulls. Let us all ascend slowly Swirl and assemble |
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II Monde triste Qui persistes Dans l’imponderable azur, Tes fumees, Tes ramees, Tes vallonnements obscurs, Tes cris, tes gestes, tes danses Sont comme un chant de silence Dans le vent Pour l’ame a jamais sereine Qui flotte et passe lointaine Menons une legere ronde Autour du monde Ou s’egosille un oiseau Dans un bouleau, Ou la chauve-souris est chere Aux lueurs du reverbere, Ou les ruisseaux doucement Sous ka mousse se perdant Resument dans un murmure Les frissons de la nature. Adieu, nos anciens foyers L’ame des amoureux nous suit Donnons-nous le main, indolents, |
II Sad world which persists like the imponderable sky with your mist and lightening, your dark valleys, your cries, your gestures, your dances like an inaudible song of wind, pacify what subsists in us. Never pass like a distance but be present like a world, a hoarse bird in a birch, dark bat appearing in the glow of its reverberating wings, streams surging into the foam of their shores and resuming in a whisper, a thrill. Farewell, to our ancient homes, Any notion of love follows us, Offer us a hand, with a lazy smile, |
I first learned of Cecile Sauvage while reading Simone De Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex,” in which Beauvoir lauded her work. From there I began a fervent reconnaissance of her poetry, and also discovered that she had a very close and passionate relationship with her son, the French composer, Olivier Messain, both while he was in the womb and after he was born. I was drawn to her work primarily because it raised concerns pertaining to birth and motherhood, which is a realm I am familiar with myself, after recently given birth to two children in two years. I felt an eerie kinship with this poet because of her fierce connection to her first child in infancy. I am also drawn to her symbolist approach to poetry, and a secondary subject in her work: a romantic relationship that she carried on with one of her publishers, via epistolary correspondence, something which broke her heart, and also kept her enduring.
Emily Vogel’s poetry, reviews, essays, and translations have most recently been published in Omniverse, The Paterson Literary Review, Lips, City Lit Rag, Luna Luna, Maggy, Lyre Lyre, The Comstock Review, The Broome Review, Tiferet, The San Pedro River Review, 2 Bridges Review, and PEN, among several others. She is the author of five chapbooks, and a full-length collection, The Philosopher’s Wife, published in 2011 by Chester River Press, a collaborative book of poetry, West of Home, with her husband Joe Weil (Blast Press), First Words (NYQ Books), and recently, Dante’s Unintended Flight (NYQ Books). She has work forthcoming in The Boston Review, Fiolet & Wing: An Anthology of Domestic Fabulism, and The North American Review. She teaches writing at SUNY Oneonta and Hartwick College and is married to the poet, Joe Weil.