poetry

Paul Éluard – The two of us

irlandesuk poetry, translation

The two of us holding hands
We believe everywhere’s home
Under the gentle tree under the black sky
Under every roof on the fringes of fire
On the empty street in broad daylight
In the vague eyes of the crowd
Alongside the foolish and the wise
Among the children and the adults
Nothing mysterious about love
Proof of that ourselves
Lovers feel at home in our home

Paul Éluard

Translation by John Lyons

Nous Deux

Nous deux nous tenant par la main
Nous nous croyons partout chez nous
Sous l’arbre doux sous le ciel noir
Sous tous les toits au coin du feu
Dan la rue vide en plein soleil
Dans les yeux vagues de la foule
Auprès des sages et des fous
Parmi les enfants et les grands
L’amour n’a rien de mystérieux
Nous sommes l’évidence même
Les amoureux se croient chez nous.

Paul Éluard

All that breath

irlandesuk poetry ,

All that breath   From the moment of birth how
many cubic metres?   The Amazon
forest churning out life thousands of miles
away  The magic of symbiosis
of give and take 
                            Take nothing for granted
Gertrude sits within four walls composing
her psalms and Alice patiently observes
as she embroiders a fine linen nap-
kin  Abandon a garden and the house
is bigger   At dinner the beef was carved
as a kind consideration  Much plea-
sure was had on all sides of the table 
Outside  fresh flowers flourished in the warm
sunshine  A gentle breeze
                                        brought gentle rain 

John Lyons

Crystal tears on the Western Front

irlandesuk poetry

It’s a room hung with words   That’s its form
A cave in the mind  replete with ochre
images of man and woman   of wild
beasts etched on bony walls    A space in time
recorded for all time  A hunter’s tale
told to all who gather round the flame that
flickers in the fading light   Beauty and
truth where silence sleeps
                             and the moon’s face looms
large   and songs of innocence have been heard
and dance has had its turn  Nothing lives for-
ever   though nothing truly dies  How strange
that ev’ry loving breath denied the ache
of art must wither as it were upon
the vine  Crystal tears
                                    on the Western Front

John Lyons

Paul Éluard – Us no matter where

irlandesuk poetry, translation

The bird halts observes an invisible prey
He hunts he provides for his young
The wherewithal to sing fly sleep

To the harsh contact with the dense forest
He prefers the damp fields
Teeming with the day’s last straws

The fine web of life
Gently covers your face
And you hold in this basket
Our means our reasons for living
You’re as wise as you are beautiful
You attract the most beautiful words

We will talk tonight about us and the birds
We won’t listen to the long and sorry history
Of people driven from their homes
By golden-jawed death
Men with less pride than beasts
Who track misfortune everywhere
May they not appear quite naked then
In a haven of clarity such as our own

We take care of each other
Day by day we preserve our life
Like a bird his hatched form
And his pleasure
Among so many birds to come

Paul Éluard (from Le livre ouvert, 1940)

Translation by John Lyons

Jules Supervielle – Boarding party

irlandesuk poetry, translation ,

Jules_Supervielle

Pirates, wild gestures,
Abducted from the Cape Verdes
In the heat of the boarding
A black woman in the sea.

The sunset metamorphoses
The ocean, the earth, the air
A naked black man turns pink
Sliced by an iron sabre.

It’s my eyes that fantasize,
And among chairs and blankets
On the gloomy liner
Only valets circulate.

Jules Supervielle  (1884-1960)

Translation by John Lyons

ABORDAGE

Pirates, gestes sauvages,
Rapt aux îles du Cap-Vert,
Dans le rut de l’abordage
Une négresse à la mer.

Le couchant métamorphose
L’océan, la terre, l’air
Un noir nu se mue en rose
Que tranche un sabre de fer.

Ce sont mes yeux qui transposent,
Et parmi chaises et plaids
Sur le paquebot morose
Seuls circulent des valets.

Robert Desnos – Love is not dead

irlandesuk poetry, translation

No, love’s not dead in this heart nor in these eyes nor in this mouth
which was announcing its ongoing funeral.
Listen, I’ve had enough of the picturesque, of colours and charm.
l love love, its tenderness and its cruelty.
My love has but one name, one shape.
Everything passes. Mouths press to this mouth.
My love has but one name, one shape.
And if some day you remember it
O you, my love’s shape and name,
One day on the high seas between America and Europe,
When the sun’s last flourish scintillates upon the undulating
surface of the waves, or maybe one stormy night
beneath a tree in the countryside, or in a fast car,
One spring morning on boulevard Malesherbes,
One rainy day,
At dawn before you go to bed,
Tell yourself that you shouldn’t regret things: Ronsard before me
and Baudelaire sang of the regret of old women and dead women
who despised love’s purest form.
You when you’re dead
You’ll still be a beauty and desirable.
I’ll already be dead, entirely enclosed within your immortal body,
within your stunning image ever present amongst
the perpetual wonders of life and eternity, but if I live
Your voice and its accent, the beam of your eyes
Your scent and the scent of your hair and many other things
will live on inside me,
In me who am neither Ronsard nor Baudelaire,
I who am Robert Desnos and whom, having known and loved you,
Are just as worthy as them.
I who am Robert Desnos, for loving you
And who wants to attach no other reputation
to my memory on the contemptible earth

Robert Desnos

From À la mystérieuse, (1926)

Translation by John Lyons

Be minimum

irlandesuk art, poetry

lake_detail

                           Landscape, John Lyons (oil on canvas)

History – dead time – a past buried in
a chromatic wilderness – a burnt match
floating in a pool of dark rainwater –
an old hair on an old pillow case  Be
minimum  – with your words – in your actions
Resolve to move forward
                                   to write new texts
in a world of warmth and affection  The
past is scribble of fret and fear and
fate beyond absolution  Be mini-
mum  Cut to the quick  Courage – conviction
Angels will appear on the edge of night
By day they will mingle with sparrows and
crows  She who is not worthy will lose her
way  Exercise discretion
                                     Say no more

John Lyons

Portrait of a Woman – Gonzalo Rojas

irlandesuk poetry, translation ,

Gonzalo Rojas

                       Gonzalo Rojas Pizarro (1916–2011)

There will always be the night, woman, to stare you in the face,
alone in your mirror, free from your husband, naked
in the precise and terrible reality of the immense vertigo
that destroys you. You’ll always have your night and your knife,
and the frivolous telephone to hear the single thrust of my farewell.

I swore not to write to you. That’s why I’m calling you in the air
to say nothing to you, as the void says: nothing, nothing,
but the same and always the same thing
that you never hear me, that you never understand me,
although your veins burn from what I’m saying.

Put on the red dress that suits your mouth and your blood,
and burn me with the last cigarette of fear
of the great love, and proceed barefoot on the air that you came on
with the visible wound of your beauty. Woe is she
who cries unceasingly in the storm.

Don’t die on me. I’m going to paint your face in a flash
just as you are: two eyes to see the visible and the invisible,
an archangel nose and an animal mouth, and a smile
that forgives me, and something sacred and ageless that flies out
of your forehead, woman, and it makes me tremble,
because yours is the face of the Spirit.

You come and go, and you worship the sea that sweeps you away
with its foam, and you remain motionless, hearing me call out to you
in the abyss of the night, and you kiss me like a wave.
You were an enigma. You will be an enigma. You will not fly with me.
Here, woman, I leave you your portrait. 

Gonzalo Rojas
(translation by John Lyons)

The great Chilean poet, Gonzalo Rojas, was exiled by the Pinochet dictatorship in 1973.

Retrato de mujer

Siempre estará la noche, mujer, para mirarte cara a cara,
sola en tu espejo, libre de marido, desnuda
en la exacta y terrible realidad del gran vértigo
que te destruye. Siempre vas a tener tu noche y tu cuchillo, y el frívolo teléfono para escuchar mi adiós de un solo tajo.

Te juré no escribirte. Por eso estoy llamándote en el aire
para decirte nada, como dice el vacío: nada, nada,
sino lo mismo y siempre lo mismo de lo mismo
que nunca me oyes, eso que no me entiendes nunca,
aunque las venas te arden de eso que estoy diciendo.

Ponte el vestido rojo que le viene a tu boca y a tu sangre,
y quémame en el último cigarrillo del miedo
al gran amor, y vete descalza por el aire que viniste
con la herida visible de tu belleza. Lástima
de la que llora y llora en la tormenta.

No te me mueras. Voy a pintarte tu rostro en un relámpago
tal como eres: dos ojos para ver lo visible y lo invisible,
una nariz arcángel y una boca animal, y una sonrisa
que me perdona, y algo sagrado y sin edad que vuela de tu frente,
mujer, y me estremece, porque tu rostro es rostro del Espíritu.

Vienes y vas, y adoras al mar que te arrebata con su espuma,
y te quedas inmóvil, oyendo que te llamo en el abismo
de la noche, y me besas lo mismo que una ola.
Enigma fuiste. Enigma serás. No volarás
conmigo. Aquí, mujer, te dejo tu figura. 

Coffee bones

irlandesuk poetry

archaeology

Coffee bones, John Lyons (30 x 30 cm, coffee grounds and oil on canvas)

Bones that yearn
for other bones
out of the earth
into the earth

coffee grounds
and yellow cadmium
eyes turning
one toward the other

only love heals
the scars left
by love

winsome
her hazel eyes
her lips
a celebration

love woven
on the loom
of her life

bones
and the echo
of other bones
long gone

Venus sidles up
to the moon
and for a brief
moment

it illuminates
their love
their bodies turning
in unison

time will one day
sweep them away
for ever conjoined
their dust

their bones
laid to rest
for a single
eternity

John Lyons

A salute to Robert Rauschenberg (2017)

irlandesuk art, poetry ,

charlene

Charlene, Robert Rauschenberg (1954)

Let’s throw some words at the page
           see if they stick :
at this frail moment in time
           I have no aspirations
I am neither a painter nor a pianist
           but my imagination flickers still
I am a collage doused in my own colours
           and not at all sure I have
the temperament for heaven
           wherever that is

but I do love music and horses
           and the way a canvas can draw me in
a composition that takes a firm grip
           on my eye and offers me easy entry
doors or gates of perception I don’t mind
           what’s in a label ?
whether it is nobler ?
           beauty happens it just does as does truth
so remove the gauze from your eyes
           put everything else aside
and get stuck into your life
           how many do you think you have ?
comb the world for affections
           and any found objects you can keep
in your silk-screened closet
           be a chancer more than refusenik
erasure is the highest form of creation
           its space affords a prelude
to multiple afterthoughts
           and many other finer things
so please pay attention
           isn’t that the message ?

John Lyons