The Absent One
This brutal brother but whose word was true, steadfast in the face of sacrifice, diamond and wild boar, ingenious and helpful, held himself in the center of all misunderstandings like a resinous tree in the cold admitting of no alloy. Against the bestiary of lies tormenting him with its goblins and its whirlwinds, he set his back, lost in time. He came to you by invisible paths, preferred a scarlet forwardness, did not thwart you, knew how to smile. As the bee leaves the orchard for the fruit already black, women withstood without betraying it the paradox of this face which had none of the lineaments of a hostage. I have tried to describe for you this indelible companion whose friendship some of us have kept. We shall sleep in hope, we shall sleep in his absence, reason not suspecting that what it names, thoughtlessly, absence, dwells within the crucible of unity.
translation © 1992 by Mary Ann Caws, from
Selected Poems of René Char
ed. Mary Ann Caws and Tina Jolas. © New Directions, 1992.
:
The Fired Schoolteacher
Three characters of proven banality accost each other with diverse poetical phrases (got a match, I beg of you, what time is it, how many leagues to the next town?), in an indifferent countryside and engage in a conversation whose echoes will never reach us. Before you is the twenty-acre field: I am its worker, its secret blood, its catastrophic stone. I leave you nothing to think.
translation © 1992 by Paul Auster, from Selected Poems of René Char
ed. Mary Ann Caws and Tina Jolas. © New Directions, 1992.
:
“Man Flees Suffocation”
Three characters of proven banality accost each other with diverse poetical phrases (got a match, I beg of you, what time is it, how many leagues to the next town?), in an indifferent countryside and engage in a conversation whose echoes will never reach us. Before you is the twenty-acre field: I am its worker, its secret blood, its catastrophic stone. I leave you nothing to think.
translation © 1992 by Mary Ann Caws Selected Poems of René Char
ed. Mary Ann Caws and Tina Jolas. © New Directions, 1992.
:
Penumbra
I was in one of those forests where the sun has no access, but where stars penetrate by night. This place could exist only because the inquisition of the State had overlooked it. Forsaken easements showed me their scorn. The obsession to chastise was taken from me. Here and there, the memory of a strength caressed the peasant flights of the grass. I ruled myself without doctrine, in serene vehemence. I was the equal of things whose secret fitted under the beam of a wing. For most, the essential is never born, and its possessors cannot exchange it without harm to themselves. None consents to lose what was conquered by dint of pain! Otherwise, it would be youth and grace, spring and delta would be equally pure.
I was in one of those forests where the sun has no access, but where stars penetrate by night for a relentless warring.
translation © 1992 by Mary Ann Caws, from Selected Poems of René Char
ed. Mary Ann Caws and Tina Jolas. © New Directions, 1992.