Poetry by Henri Meschonnic

*

I’m not always me
sometimes I am a tree a
sound in the air a breath a flight
footsteps
a warmth in you
a calm
that you breathe

– from Puisque je suis ce buisson (Since I Am This Bush), Arfuyen, 2001

*

since we are
a small part
of the infinite
what moves in it is us
the light is still us
we must savor its death
while we are alive
on every one of its faces
it is the silence of this laugh
hidden by my hand over my mouth
for a long time we
have always had this moment

– from Tout entier visage (Whole Face), Arfuyen, 2005

*

I know that I find myself again
only when I find you when
I find us
a grain of sand
is enough to hide us
and I move a mountain
to find us again

– from De monde en monde (From World to World), Arfuyen, 2009

*

I will never finish
the sea water
I try to hold
the thread that takes me
to close my eyes
I fill up with others
I enter all the houses
as if I lived there

– from L’obscur travaille (The Dark Works), Arfuyen, 2012

*

I know why
I recognize myself
in a tree
it draws me
at the same time
toward the sky
and toward the earth
in it I hear
my dreams

– from Demain Dessus Demain Dessous (Tomorrow Above Tomorrow Below), Arfuyen, 2010

*

can a day exist without
the trees being the trees
without the unknown surrounding us
that makes us what we are
without each tiny part
of us a body from where
suns emerge
and we
close our eyes
so we don’t see them

– from Et la terre coule (And the Earth Flows), Arfuyen, 2006

*

I no longer know whether I’m dreaming
or whether a dream has
forsaken me a night train
a part of me but which part
did I lose
which night
which train

– from Tout entier visage (Whole Face), Arfuyen, 2005

Bios

Henri Meschonnic

Henri Meschonnic (1932–2009) was a key figure of French “new poetics.” He is known worldwide as a poet, essayist, and translator of the Hebrew verse of the Bible.

Don Boes and Gabriella Bedetti

Gabriella Bedetti studied translation at The University of Iowa and the Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Her translations of Meschonnic’s essays and other writings have appeared in New Literary History, Critical Inquiry, and Diacritics. Meschonnic was a guest of the MLA at her roundtable with Ralph Cohen and Susan Stewart.

Don Boes is the author of Good Luck With That, Railroad Crossing, and The Eighth Continent, selected by A. R. Ammons for the Samuel French Morse Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in The Louisville Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, CutBank, Zone 3, and The Cincinnati Review.

Copyright (c) Régine Blaig. English translation copyright (c) Gabriella Bedetti and Don Boes, 2020.