Poems by Francis Combes

NO, THE EARTH ISN’T ROUND
                                    
No, the Earth isn’t round
If the Earth were round
you’d see it
you’d know it
If the Earth were round
there wouldn’t be some
of us on top, on one side,
and others, the majority of the others,
at the bottom,
often way  down below…
If the Earth were round
no country would be able to call itself
the center of the Earth
for everything would be at the center
and all mankind
everywhere around the Earth
would be in the same boat…
But this isn’t the case
and the Earth goes awry
because the Earth isn’t round.
In any event,
not yet.


Translation by the US poet Jack Hirschman


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Simple

It’s quite easy
to change day to night
(the sun does it every morning).
It’s quite simple
to change ice to water
(a few rays will do).
It’s quite simple
to produce flowers at the end of or old branches
(a bit of spring time is enough).
It’s quite simple
to change this unequal and unjust world
(not much is needed:
to come together).

Translation by Alan Dent

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Francis Combes was born, on the 31th of May 1953, in South of France. As a poet, he published about 20 books. Among them: Common Cause, and If the Symptoms persist, recently  published in English (Smokestack Books, England). He was translated into English, German, Spanish, Chinese, Arab, Macedonian, Albanian… He also translated into French Mayakovsky, Brecht, Attila Jozsef, Heinrich Heine, Jack Hirschman… For 15 years, he was in charge of a campaign to put poems on posters, in the Parisian Metro. He founded, with 33 other writers, the publishing company Le Temps des Cerises, which published a lot of poets in France. He was also the director of an International poetry festival in Paris and its suburb.  He took part in poetry festivals, in San Francisco, London, Medellin. Granada in Nicaragua, Caracas, Quining in China, Taipeh, Struga (Macedonia), Sète, Naples, Athens…

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