Seven poems from José-Flore Tappy’s « Trás-os-Montes » / Plume
- Post By: johntaylor
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Seven poems from José-Flore Tappy’s Trás-os-Montes (Éditions La Dogana, 2018) have been translated and published by Plume. Here are the English translations:
Tiny and bent over
the sink, so far from us
in her blue apron, lost
in her rain boots, she’s sorting
the black cherries, setting the ripest
off to the side, separating them
from the rotten ones
She seems to be measuring
an old dream from a distance,
visiting it with her fingertips
behind the bare windowpane
the clouds
leave stains
**
Silence for her
knows no more obstacles,
she watches it rising
without impatience
like something urgent
and endless
**
How to sleep, though,
without returning once more
to the vegetable patch,
taking the path again as if
going back in time, to make sure
everything has been left behind
according to the rules,
and made ready, before the storm
what remains behind
sometimes the only chance
for tomorrow
**
On a canvas tarp she places
her stones one after the other,
wedges them in, arranges
more solid ones, every inch
of her ground, every plant
deserves her hand
cabbages, turnips, tomatoes,
lettuces, she spells them out,
secures them to her words
ramparts of voice
against the wind
**
As a girl, she’d run off
fleeing shadows—deceiving reflections,
old toothless faces—reaching
in the blink of an eye
the empty sunny streets
today, when in doubt,
she makes sure, straightening the stakes
of bent-over fences, enclosing
with a fictive wall some fruit
to come and still taking shape
in her thoughts
Better to make ready, than to abandon
things to the worst. For who otherwise
would help her gather up the planks,
scattered by gusts, of such a dilapidated
rowboat?
**
Little is needed to keep
shortage away. But this little is heavy
and from morning to night
she lifts it without respite
**
Thin as a handkerchief
my page I scrub and clean
down to the darkness that destroys it
and is stronger than words
while she awakens early, like a nail
boring into the cold, braving it,
moving forward,
all her thoughts gathered
into a silent point,
a single point that hurts
(translation© John Taylor)
All of José-Flore Tappy’s previous books are available in Sheds / Hangars: Collected Poems 1983-2013 (Bitter Oleander Press, 2014):
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