Poems by Victor Blanc
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Poem found on the Internet
What got into me to live What Was I thinking in my old hat In what country have I caught This malaria of dreams And who broke the lime green glass Of broken cooing lines Death need not ring itself with doves And adrift goes my no-good life Like a mass grave of climbing vine A building site left incomplete By some sad slapdash starling With swallow-stolen orbs O my industrial birds Death need not ring itself with doves And if I could go on and on Quack-quack of quaint car-horns I would go a-strangling birdies My song dies in a hoarse pinch In the tune of a chaffinch What have I come up with good grief Death need not ring itself with doves I need to engrave fragments From the past on my skin At the clotted Heart of my berserk bosom And I can hear a nightingale Singing the fair hauberk of dawn I will stammer like a parrot Death need not ring itself with doves History's a water of sorts D'you know Unquenchably wasted Some stale-fresh saliva I will wed the human race One day and their queer crows Wet with their bleak kisses Death need not ring itself with doves At the vanguard between the sharp stakes of dusk a blood-soaked dove Again gives up its dovish ghost Death need not ring itself with doves Translation by Cédric Gauthier Salomé Standing in the blond night Salomé Holds in her hand the fountain-head She has danced Is it for her And in her hair sleepless Harrases are dancing Am I the head Or is it Herod Concealed in the curtains I will write as one who dreaming purls Words tattooed on his back Scattered like jackstraws Her moving body teaches me The remote deaths of prophets Day is dying over Lateran And there are kneeling tyrants Tete a tete Salomé is kindling The spark whereby the wick Of violent revolutions burns Salomé is dancing in the smoke Salomé Fire-smelling woman There are only her hips When the oracles break Under her feet forgotten planets polarize It was today of long ago There is no more dancing to the slow pace of palaces Tar is smoking The town is melting Under the epileptic neons Sham Salomés Frantically Masturbate on the sound of ardent music Amid these women I am Like some alcohol spilled out Sticking to all the feet Paris is like a firecracker Seine-tinselled under a shimmering sky Over the roofs stars groom themselves up I can no longer get the algebra of party-goers Poetry is going out of fashion Mythologies are dead Their memories have eroded There's only Salomé intoxicated True and naked By the dark wine of my thoughts Dancing Dancing through the streets Dancing through the ways of the earth And hanging on her lips The old world is dying And with her eyes my head goes off Hanging on her lips The world is dying And younger grows my shadow Translation by Cédric Gauthier |
Victor Blanc was born in Paris in 1992. After studying modern French literature, Éditions de l’Île Bleue published his first book of poetry, Réalité augmentée (“Augmented Reality”) in 2012. In 2014, a second collection of poems, Paradis argousins (“Paradises Rozzers”) was published by Éditions Le Temps des Cerises and prefaced by poet and photographer Franck Delorieux. Victor Blanc regularly writes articles for the cultural newspaper Les Lettres françaises.
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