Translated by Marilyn McCabe
I will lean so hard into life,
grab so rough and tight
that before the soft day ravishes me
I’ll have warmed it already in my arms.
The sea, spread wide around the world,
will savor, in its tides’ errant routes,
the taste of my sadness, acrid and salty.
It tosses on stormy days like a boat.
I will leave in the folds of hills
the fire of these eyes that saw them flower,
and the cicada that sits on the thorn bush
will cry strident with the voice of my desire.
The shadows of where my hands have been
will flutter fleet like wings
on the fresh fields’ new green
and the tufted grass on the edge of graves.
Nature, my joy and my home,
will exhale the scent of my unflagging passion,
and on the droop of human sadness
I’ll leave the singular shape of my heart.
* * *
L’Empreinte
Je m’appuierai si bien et si fort à la vie,
D’une si rude étreinte et d’un tel serrement
Qu’avant que la douceur du jour me soit ravie
Elle s’échauffera de mon enlacement.
La mer, abondamment sur le monde étalée,
Gardera dans la route errante de son eau
Le goût de ma douleur qui est âcre et salée
Et sur les jours mouvants roule comme un bateau.
Je laisserai de moi dans le pli des collines
La chaleur de mes yeux qui les ont vu fleurir,
Et la cigale assise aux branches de l’épine
Fera vibrer le cri strident de mon désir.
Dans les champs printaniers la verdure nouvelle
Et le gazon touffu sur le bord des fossés
Sentiront palpiter et fuir comme des ailes
Les ombres de mes mains qui les ont tant pressés.
La nature qui fut ma joie et mon domaine
Respirera dans l’air ma persistante ardeur.
Et sur l’abattement de la tristesse humaine
Je laisserai la forme unique de mon cœur.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 25, Issue 5.
Marilyn McCabe’s poetry has won contests through AROHO, Word Works, Grayson Books, and NYS Council on the Arts. Collections of poems include Perpetual Motion and Glass Factory, and chapbooks Rugged Means of Grace and Being Many Seeds. Videopoems have appeared in festivals and galleries.
French poet Anna de Noailles (1876-1933) was the first woman to receive the title “commander” from the French Legion of Honor, in 1931. In 1921 she won the Grand Prix de Littérature. In 1922 she became the first woman to be named a member of the Belgian Royal Academy of French Language and Literature. Her work has not been widely translated.
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