From The Ink’s Path

1.4

and now it is no longer possible to patch up the day

everything that promised a better life only distracted

and silence prevails on the left now and that always puts more

holes in one’s thinking in one’s eyes which no longer see meaning

the past came back with a vengeance it changed names and it blasted

the old social games where we can still discern a few traces

of small brushstrokes that in another previous time were words

the gaze just gathers up the remains then draws back air again

it doesn’t remember which act it was that spoke deep inside

and with silence this sometimes gives rise to a lump in the throat

with the sudden certainty of an internal death sentence

and we have to live thereafter despite the corpse inside us

in this tomb that pretends to be an ordinary body

we look at its skin as if it’s the edge of an affliction

and now images get involved that end up glueing eyelids

behind which they consume all intimacy that bit of space

around the corpse where there survived a rattle of rebellion

Author and Translator Bios

Bernard Noël (1930 – 2021) was a French poet, novelist, essayist and art critic. He received the Grand Prix national de la poésie (National Grand Prize of Poetry) in 1992, the Prix Robert Ganzo (Robert Ganzo Prize) in 2010, as well as the Grand prix de poésie from the Académie Française for his entire poetic work in 2016. He is the author of numerous books of including: La Chute des temps and Extraits du corps from Poésie/Gallimard and Le Reste du voyage: Et Autres Poèmes from Points/poésie Seuil.

Eléna Rivera is a poet and translator, born in Mexico City, who spent her formative years in Paris. She won the 2010 Robert Fagles prize for her translation of Bernard Noël's The Rest of the Voyage (Graywolf Press, 2011) and is a recipient of a NEA Fellowship in Translation. She also translated Isabelle Garron’s Body Was (Litmus Press, 2022) and Isabelle Baladine Howald’s Phantomb (Black Square Editions, 2022). She has received fellowships from the Djerassi Foundation, the Witter Bynner Poetry Translator Residency at the Santa Fe Art Institute, and MacDowell. THE CCAWINGG OF CROWS, a new translation, is forthcoming from Litmus Press.

© Bernard Noël . Translation © by Eléna Rivera . All rights reserved.

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