Tuesday, March 14, 2017

Béatrice Machet # 14 For the Beam series (Birds)



# 14  For the Beam series (Birds)



Beam of birds.                                                                                                                Flocks of wings. 
Over the ground a                                                                                                        dark migrating blade. Concentrated days                                                                         accumulated for months.
 Incapable of mirroring any                                                   reality but the spur the momentum
to go. Away even of heads and                                      minds. Life and death floating over.
Always the combination of                               presence and absence. The one
childhood is aware of is                               feeling so strongly. This dance
between nothing and every                  thing.  Beam of flying ideas.
Swelling. One doesn’t turn           his back to history. One can-
not turn one's back on          History. War is almost there.
Inside the panel  of        ideas. Sowing.  Making a
a storm so as to        shape a fan. It goes
this far this       fast. Choking. Like
a shaving      this beam.
Birds.






Faisceau d’oiseaux. Ban d’ailes. Au-dessus du sol une lame sombre migre. Un concentré de jours accumulés pendant des mois. Incapable de refléter quelconque réalité sauf la poussée sauf l’élan d’aller. Hors même des têtes et des esprits. La vie et la mort flottent plus haut. Toujours la combinaison de présence et absence. Celle dont l’enfance est consciente celle qu’elle ressent avec force. Cette danse entre rien et tout. Faisceau d’idées. Qui enfle. On ne doit pas tourner le dos à l’histoire. On ne peut pas retourner le cours de l’Histoire. La guerre est presque là. Dans l’échantillon des idées. Semant la tempête pour prendre la forme d’un éventail. Ça vient aussi loin aussi vite. Asphyxiant. Comme un rasoir ce faisceau. Des oiseaux.

4 comments:

  1. Again I enjoy your design Beatrice. This time the widening and narrowing layout grants a special rythmn.
    One is coerced into enduring or savouring the pauses as well as a hightened awarness of ones own breathing and of course anticipation ..Great fun!
    Just a point: on line 11 'is & is' or did you mean is & it's ... or is this another pause to process?
    I love the final ' compressing ' rythmn and tense moments of this piece.

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  2. Hi Jefree

    thanks for the comments, always very appreciated. About the “is & is issue”, the sentence goes like this :

    The one childhood is aware of is feeling so strongly.

    And it stands for The one childhood is aware of, the one childhood is feeling so strongly.

    I didn’t want to repeat the one childhood, I didn’t want any coma … Since in French the succession without punctuation mark and repetition is understandable, I thought I could have recourse to the same construction… I might be wrong .. but yes, for rythm's sake I managed a break there.

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  3. Love the concrete poem and the non-concrete French below - they work together so well. The gap on the left after “Over the ground a” is visually jarring but I’m guessing it’s just because you had to manually lay this out in the blog.

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  4. Thanks Magdalena, and yes, I never manage to have the poem displayed exactly the way it is in my manuscript! thus the gap you mention, but I'm glad you understood it's not a decision I made myself!

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