Wednesday, February 1, 2017

Béatrice Machet # 7 for the Beam Series



        The idea here would be to integrate into the poem some symbols that would tell  something more than the words , not exactly illustrations but forms that would carry more meaning, and of course I thought about Native American signals but I don't want to "steal" them so I decided for other symbols ... see the picture between the two texts



# 7  (project 52)                             for the beam series

Beam of vertebrae 
Clump like a flowered tree in one’s back

Like the promise of forests to grow.
Without fearing to go through
Stories in each clearing  Each rock a milestone
A creek flowing down to the bottom

A shelter for bodies
and your own body might be late but
it’s home anyway  A land
in a certain space of which essence is tasted while
walking  We know the night is
coming from the top of the path so
we sing  Always back the songs ascending
from one bone to the other each one a word 
a memory  a reference   Painful
as a scar can be  Joyous as a smile can be 


  

 Faisceau de vertèbres 
 Bouquet comme un arbre fleuri dans le dos

Comme la promesse faite des forêts à pousser.
Sans avoir à craindre de les traverser
Des histoires dans chaque clairière  Chaque pierre un jalon
Un ruisseau tout en bas

Un abri pour les corps
et le vôtre propre pourrait être en retard mais
c’est chez vous malgré tout Une terre
dans un espace dont l’essence se goûte
en marchant  Nous savons la nuit
arriver au sommet du sentier alors
nous chantons De retour toujours les chants ascendants
d’un os à l’autre chacun une parole
un souvenir   une borne  Aussi douloureux
qu’une cicatrice v Joyeux comme un sourire

3 comments:

  1. As always, I love this, Beatrice - really looking forward to the full collection. Can I just suggest you drop the last duplicate of 'can be’ and end on the word smile? In fact, I might drop both 'can be’s' so that you end up with 'as a scar Joyous as a smile’ for the last line. Just to up the impact. Your flowered trees look to me like uteri (uteruses?), which fits the text. Was that the intention?

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  2. Dear Magdalena, thanks for your comment and sharp reading! And thanks for suggesting to abandon the two "can be" , it's a relief for me to know it's possible, you made it clear to me and yes, I will drop them! As a matter of fact, I chose , in my French version, to drop the "can be" thing because it's felt as heavy and in french minds the meaning is obvious enough, no need to add verbs sometimes, and especially when it comes to non-action verbs or stative verbs.... Still struggling on little things that have to do with "the spirit" of English! I'm not exactly bilingual then!
    As for the "symbols", I found this uterus-like shape or waterfall-like one or ... in any case something very "feminine"-like connotated ,interesting. I wanted to create some ambiguity , a dream-like atmosphere and yet, yes, it speaks about a corporeal sensation of being a woman, of living with, of being, acting as a female body, which means a life bearer, a life and birth giver! Incidentaly it speaks also about my experience of dancing, what, while practising in studios with other dancers, you can imagine or feel or seek for, to improvise a sequence of meaningful gestures ... (I don't dance anymore! I must confess!)

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  3. I love the idea of the body as landscape and the way you get inside such a body. Songs between bones is a very particular resonance for beam. I must confess my mind went immediately to the eastern Chakras, a wealth of metaphysics. I agree with Magdalena's final line. My bilingual knowledge is scant yet i understand pruning is alway s on the agenda for any garden of work.
    I like this series v much.

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