By Tracy
This is an early draft translation & I may still change it quite a bit, but it gives an idea of this remarkable poem and poet, pictured here with her children.
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| By Unknown author - The Life of Messiaen, Christopher Dingle, p.5, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5552358 |
Cécile Sauvage (1883-1927), Child, pale embryo...
Child, pale embryo, within the waters you sleep
Like a little dead god in a coffin of glass.
What you taste now is the lightweight existence
Of a fish that’s drowsing under reeds in the deep.
You live like a plant, and your unawareness
Entirely artless, is a lily half-opened
And it does not even know out of what profound
Layer within earth’s breast it is drawing substance.
My sap runs throughout you and lends you its soul,
Sweet bee-less flower whose brow bears no trace of dew.
Nonetheless the great grasping expanse demands you
And in my small refuge causes you to tremble.
Into the soil of my flesh, young and motherly,
You do not know how many threads your flesh has set,
And your gaze I already see so well will not
Ever learn from books this innocent mystery.
How tight and close I hold you, who can know?
You belong to me as the dawn does to the plain,
Round about you my life is wrapped warm and woollen
To ward off the chill as your limbs secretly grow.
I surround, encompass you like the green almond
That closes its jewel-case on the milky kernel,
Like the cottony folds of the soft pod, the boll
With which the silken and infant seed is covered.
The tears that spring to my eyes, how well you know them,
They have the deep tang of my blood upon your lips,
You know what fervour, what burning fever slips,
Unleashes in my veins a fierce, relentless stream.
Toward my dark night I can see your arms venture
As if they would caress what is unknown in me,
That point where anyone constricted painfully
Feels an estrangement from everything in nature.
Listen, now while I am still within your hearing,
Leave the impression of your child-mouth in my breast,
Respond to my love with your obedient flesh
What other entwinement will ever seem so strong?
In days to come when I shall live flameless, single,
When you are a man and living less for my sake,
Over the times when I was with you I’ll look back,
Times when there were two of us at play in my soul.
For we do play sometimes. I give you my heart, see,
Vivid as a jewel flashing its mirages,
I give to you my eyes in which clear images
Upon a cool, fresh lake are rowing languidly.
Those are golden swans that seem as if they were ships,
Set upon the water, nymphs that belong to night.
Upon their brows the moon is dipping its bright hat
And they for you alone have smiles upon their lips.
When later on you take your early steps, likewise
The rose, the sun, the tree, the turtledove will make
In the light of new grace that guides your every look
The old familiar moves that you will recognise.
But you’ll no longer know upon which flaxen shore
Great silver fish that used to give you rings were found
Nor upon which hidden prairie’s secret ground
Lambs with their naive feet once leapt in such ardour.
For never again will my heart that speaks with yours
This hot and silent language made of our thoughts
Be able to fasten anew the loosened knots:
Dawn does not know the dark from which it emerges.
No, you’ll be unaware which Venus pure and fair
Dropped the flame of a kiss into your very blood,
The mystery’s anguish where art will be shattered,
And this taste for feeding, nurturing shy despair.
Nothing more of me will you know on that fatal
Day when you hurl yourself into rough life for good,
O my little mirror who see my solitude
Leaning anxiously at the edge of your crystal.
(Translated by Tracy Ryan)
With thanks to Peter Dayan for pointing me to this poet.
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