how lovely they are

signalling dark

peaks of coryphées eyes arms hearts

your smile your breathing

 

daily apotheosis of your comet hair

gilt on these gilt dancers whose belonging

is to bear young with their moments to die

 

how lovely these rockets

alphabetic inscribe

life entire and relative 

 

departs I see them offer conceal selves

moving fingers over fire juggling

festival earth hungry opens long

pale mouth how aroma of toasted

skin becomes not disagreeable

if sky ate with land there

it would only in not nourishing

swallow souls

 

but I have run with sweetness

how this war all guts' length

from me has flames crying

that I am here

have ploughed bed where I pour myself in

thousand little rivers at prow of trench

I am still on all sides

I am one beginning this thing for

epochs longer than feebly telling

flight of Icarus

 

I bequeath this story of Guillaume Apollinaire

who handled war and knew self

everywhere contented in towns

behind in all remains of universes

in one barbed and trampled

in women cannon horse

top to bottom at all four points

unmistakeable heat of wake

 

certain  it was lovelier

if I could have supposed that all things

I am part of might

occupy me

but nothing does in sense

if I am over all

only am  in me

me

 

 

 

 

for one day

your weeping well

beloved puts out souvenirs

of me at front of armies I am

flowering as mimosa

 

fountain head in space

of blood entire this coated

world sea valleys mountains

golden fruited stars living

 

in all things I make red

your coral breasts  mouth crimson

hair elegant  in destiny nothing

will grow old sun  accrues

 

this fatal bloom of me

crayoning petals with one

gush  of love unparalleled as will

here fall on this lover earth

 

stronger in your discarded

body if I die down there

remember follies of our age

and love and ardour

 

my burst blood cascades

in this cheerful passion be

more happy for being

sweet my foolishness

my only love

 

white disquieted november

slashed inside these trees

and here artillery grows old

wound in wire my heart

breaks out of as april might

 

I inspire diurnal stench  

of life from rotting flowers

white shells crooning how

I love snow blossoms on

chevaux de frises in fleece

as barbs come to you unspeaking

pied in spume and there deliver

love in panthers pigeons blue

stars holy spirit in your white

breasts I animate your eyes

as springs unknotting

tongue to pattern  you

lilied in these canticles

steal me to beside where

I breathe your sweet palms

varied into leaf  hands

beckon nocturnal blooming

rockets fall again

pouring you as tears

   

                                                

                                                                © Jacqui Rowe 2008

                                      

from VARSITY, CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY

Perdika Press

Shirley Society, St. Catharine's College

Wednesday February 4^th

 

 

 

...This type of loose translation is

about half Perdika's output. Jacqui

Rowe read from hers, an upcoming

'rendering' of Guillaume Apollinaire's

poems. Rowe is a fairly new poet [to Perdika],

and when Petrucci introduces her he

speaks of the pleasure in watching "a

long-dead innovator possessing a still

living innovator". She wrote 70 poems

over six weeks, depicting Apollinaire's

"Hollywood view of himself " while

fighting in WW1 and writing to girls

who "seem to exist merely

to have love letters written

to them". As she says in one

of the poems, "nothing / will

grow old", and in both her

translations and Petrucci's

there is a joy in seeing old

language made vivid with

images like "artillery /wound

in wire my heart breaks

out of "...

 

Colette Sensier

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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