This poem is taken from PN Review 198, Volume 37 Number 4, February - March 2011.
Five Poems (translated by Marilyn Hacker)Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker
The cloud hanging over the valley has been there forever
Trains come from the coast cross it without stopping
Gloomy travellers would photograph the cemetery but not the children, despite the little
bells they wore on their ankles
Standing on the rooftops
We loosed their names in the air with holiday balloons
We invited them to share the cries of our ears of corn
And touch the mouldy robe of the Saint in her reliquary
We would beg them to carry away in their luggage the wind's hyena laughter when it
rained on the winter
And rained on the cemetery and the well-preserved smiles of the dead cramped beneath
their windowpane
And the mothers shook out the sheets to drive away stubborn souls and when they
cried for no reason
With the same movements the mothers drove off jackals and God who had no place in
their beehives
...
Trains come from the coast cross it without stopping
Gloomy travellers would photograph the cemetery but not the children, despite the little
bells they wore on their ankles
Standing on the rooftops
We loosed their names in the air with holiday balloons
We invited them to share the cries of our ears of corn
And touch the mouldy robe of the Saint in her reliquary
We would beg them to carry away in their luggage the wind's hyena laughter when it
rained on the winter
And rained on the cemetery and the well-preserved smiles of the dead cramped beneath
their windowpane
And the mothers shook out the sheets to drive away stubborn souls and when they
cried for no reason
With the same movements the mothers drove off jackals and God who had no place in
their beehives
...
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