Yves Bonnefoy, little by little

This is the first part of a sequence by Yves Bonnefoy, titled L'été de nuit.  Another try at translating this beautiful poet.  (see original below)

SUMMER NIGHT

                  I

It seems to me, this evening,

That the starry sky, spread wide,

Draws near to us; and that the night,

Behind so many sparks, is less obscure.

And the leaves blaze too under the leaves,

The green, the orange of ripe fruit, intensified,

Lamp of an angel near; a shudder

Of hidden light seizes the universal tree.

It seems to me, this evening,

That we entered the garden, of which the angel

Has closed the gates without return.

from a sequence by Yves Bonnefoy

Brief poem by Yves Bonnefoy

Another poem, in my halting version, by Yves Bonnefoy (from the series A une terre d'aube) :

THE BIRD AMONG RUINS

The bird among ruins is freed from death,

He nestles in gray stone facing the sun,

He leapt over all suffering, all memory,

He knew no more what is tomorrow in eternity.

the same voice (Bonnefoy)

Another brief poem from the fine, the superfine, Yves Bonnefoy :

THE SAME VOICE, ALWAYS

I am like the bread you break,

Like the fire you burn, like the pure water

That will escort you to the land of the dead.

Like the foam,

Which hemmed for you the light and the harbor.

Like the night bird, who erases the banks,

The night wind suddenly more rough and cold.

Yves Bonnefoy, from sequence "A une terre d'aube"

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.

Bonnefoy, la traduction du jour

Here's another fling at translating Yves Bonnefoy... the poem is "L'Éternité du feu", from the sequence Le chant de sauvegarde.  (see original below)

ETERNITY OF FIRE

Phoenix says to the fire, which is fate

And bright landscape throwing its shadows,

I am one who awaits you, says he,

I come to lose myself in your grave land.

He regards the fire.  How it comes,

How it plants itself in the gloomy soul,

And how dawn breaks at windows – how

Fire goes mute, falling to sleep deeper than fire.

He feeds on silence.  He hopes

Each fold of an eternal silence,

As it descends on him like sand,

Will aggravate his immortality.

Quatrain by Yves Bonnefoy

Another stab at translation.  This is an untitled poem from Yves Bonnefoy's sequence "Le chant de sauvegarde" :


If the bird were torn into pebbles, you said,
He would be, aloft in his dawn sky, our shore.
But he, shipwrecked from harmonious vault,
Already sank weeping to the clay of the dead.

Bonnefoy summer

Have been slowly reading and enjoying poems by the late Yves Bonnefoy.  Here's a rough translation of one of them, from the collection Hier régnant désert :

A VOICE

Nettle, O prow of this shore where it crashes,
O frozen upright in the wind,
Show me a sign of presence, O my servant
Robed in scaly black.

O grey pebble,
If it's true that you harbor the color of blood,
Rouse yourself from this blood coursing through you,
Open to me the door of your cry,

So that in you I draw near her
Who is pretending to sleep,
Head closed over you.

"Une Voix" (Yves Bonnefoy)

Geoffrey Hill, Yves Bonnefoy, Elie Wiesel

SMALL EMERALD ELEGY

                      Geoffrey Hill, Yves Bonnefoy, Elie Wiesel

Light at dusk across the grass

salted with white crosses,

poppies... graph of losses

rounding up the Somme.  Mass

for the mass of young men gone.

On Cemetery Ridge

the plowmen made a bridge

of bone, unbreakable – and won

the day.  Coraggio, amigos.

Somnolent River

Time will shiver silver

when the last full measure flows

from infant veins, against the grain

of human servitude –

that dominant X (rude

chi-rho, nailed up in the brain).

In the barranca (by the monarchs’

den) the battered Consul

penetrated to the well

of Golgotha.  His mind sparks

like the last firefly of evening meadows...

a small emerald octagon,

or 4-leaf clover – moon

over Eire, over the raging shadows

of the nations.  Clue vero, Ariadne-

yarn.  A catenary

arc, or smile – an airy

rack of clouds, threading the Neva R.

7.2.16

George Bellows, Rain on the River (RI School of Design Museum of Art)