from Temps Réel [“Real Time”] © Editions du Seuil, 2024
Translated from the French by Samuel Martin
CARTESIO Cartesio, that’s his name in Italian, I think it suits him, anyway our paths crossed again one evening: sipping a drink on a café terrace, an unremarkable street corner except there’s no such thing, every corner is different, each one hangs in the web of all that has shaped it outside the pharmacy a young woman is folding up the tent where they’ve been doing tests, a bicycle goes past, a stroller, a suitcase, another bike, pedestrians, half a dozen bikes at once with flashing lights all in silence aside from a car or two, “merely this and nothing more” but such a density! And the glass of white wine that seems to contain it. Descartes is sitting next to me, doubting that all this exists and I say: sure it does, René, look around you – he doesn’t answer, just smiles The existence of objects unfurling in three-dimensional space astounded him. He’d never seen them quite like that, in relief, so many fruitions of some incredible audacity, whether objects made by men (a bike, a wicker chair like the ones found on café terraces) or things naturally occurring (a tree, a flower, the fish at a market stall) ………………………………………………………………………………………………………............... much later, he’s gone by now, rue d’Ulm desperate for sleep, no such luck, floundering, in dribs and drabs I listen to concepts rub against each other, the rustle that sharpens them and wears them down, me down, drifting off and waking again, how long does a hypothesis last, what happens to words when they submit to the exercise instead of just flying, flitting, falling back? Their space is yours as much as mine, I’m on my way, you coming? The room’s dark, time is slow, the window open…
and then the wings were folded gently in, the beating
ceased, daylight faded – to have somewhere to lay our
heads, a hiding place, a nest, was the reward, a silent
hope that we marked with tiny chirrups – not calls or
song – just the last echoes of the dense and anxious
joy that we knew as our life, we birds
LIÈGE-BONN
………………………………
these are the same years
the red-painted nail reflected in the landscape (Sambre-et-Meuse)
plays with multicolored balls on a touchscreen
and now I can see a plain
about to open up, opening
deep-set hilltops rising in the distance
beyond corridors and plowed fields
predominant green
a clear sun speckles me with white shards amid the blue
airplane contrails converging above the small homes
a hunters’ watchtower and cows in the valleys, from what country?
I recall this was the birthplace of Henri Xhonneux, butcher’s boy
a film producer with a loud laugh
and pockmarked face, a charming man
he had a tall house in Brussels just off Avenue Louise
and now he’s gone, how idiotic
that with all the dead every journey becomes a litany
in Aix there’s a chapel but only in French
the Carolingian church is quite large
who did I see it with, I can’t remember
Aachen Aachen
not far from here was the glassworks
where my friend Piotr tried to develop holograms
that would behave like mirrors
in an underground laboratory away from any vibrations
yet still everything trembled, all the traces of long-gone presences
and here it’s the same, outside, on the platform, in the woods
we travel through the tremor
what more can you say
I’m seconded by the thin layer of dark green moss
coloring the wall along the tracks
and small allotments
on the fringes of the industrial zones, smoke
when everything was still in use
growth and decline the staggering hopeless collapse
and yet it all looks so neatly organized
the industrial age will have lasted two centuries, no more
with its black pigments on the skin, the earthy wind
that rose from the buried seams and dissipated in bits of grit
escarbilles (that was the word) in the railway tunnels
coming through the windows you weren’t supposed to lean out
……………………...........................
this picture would be called Construction Site on the Bank of the Rhine
white-flecked grey materials piled up on the scaffolding
I took them for stones at first but the workers
were passing whole slabs up to each other
Alsecco is the name of the company that makes this kind
of ultra-light insulating cinder block
although bound with cement they suggest
a fully dismantlable world
which gives a clue about these lands that have been disputed
or destroyed
portraits of prince-electors and duchesses in the halls of palaces
now turned into banks,
the siren song of gold has never exactly been subtle
rows of barges go up and down, the Siebengebirge
watch them pass in silence, men on their morning jog
along the riverbanks lined with small lime trees
you’d think peace had finally come this time
yet something almost seems to have been forgotten along the way
people anxiously looking over their shoulder, quickening their pace
even in the rather languid province that Bonn
has become, how odd to have chosen as a capital
this little town with no crowds and no smoke
the way it was, the way it used to be
my pen pal lived in Bad Godesberg, I only ever saw her photo
her name was Christa Luthardt
I can see gardens, shady paths, blond children
chasing after balls, a yapping dog,
a woman in swimsuit and sunglasses
our fates were already monitored by makers
of pious images, more pious than the ones in churches
learning to get rid of them took a long time
the Beethoven-Haus, a German toddler’s first steps
if only the smell of soup were wafting down the corridor
but you can picture his despair so far from all this
in a glass case four ear trumpets
made to order, some with metal bands
encircling the head,
where was the music he heard inside him,
where was the song undeposited in the world?
You can see him setting aside the costly, useless contraptions
and closing his eyes to slip away into the night of sound
that his hand at the piano knew by heart
exploring it like a hollow body, a cave
with water droplets falling one by one
the crossed-out fragments of a song forever yet to come
today his statue stands by the post office in a square
straight out of an engraving
Jean-Christophe Bailly (Paris, 1949) is a poet, essayist, and playwright, whose previous books of poetry include L’Oiseau Nyiro (La Dogana, 1991) and Basse continue (Seuil, 2000). His latest volume, Temps réel (Seuil, 2024), from which these poems are taken, sets out to expand the possibilities of the poem by blending different forms of writing, from travel notes and recollections to narrative and didactic modes.
Samuel Martin (Fargo, 1984) is a translator and French instructor in Philadelphia. His translation of Jean-Christophe Bailly’s The Instant and Its Shadow: A Story of Photography was published by Fordham University Press in 2020. He is a co-editor of Hopscotch Translation.
World Poetry Review 