9.21.2016

Yves Bonnefoy, encore

Another attempt at translation.  This is Yves Bonnefoy, "Le Pays Découvert", from his sequence A une terre d'aube.  (The last word of this poem seems nearly untranslatable, since le temps can mean both "time" and "weather".)


THE OPEN COUNTRY

Star on the threshold.  Wind, held
In motionless hands.
Word and wind in a long contest,
Then there was this gust of silence.

The open land was only grey stone.
Very far and low lay a flash of empty stream.
But night rains over the surprised earth
Awoke an ardor that you call time.



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