The rigid landscape
On this transparent day
light sits on the stones
If you touch the earth
it crumbles
Speech explodes with heat
Pursue your wandering
in this rigid landscape
he who stops
is lost
Le paysage immobile
En ce jour transparent
la lumière couve les pierres
Si tu touches la terre
elle s’émiette
La parole éclate de chaleur
Continue ton errance
dans ce paysage immobile
celui qui s’arrête
est perdu
The crow
Inside my shirt
I carry death
like a crow
apprentice to speech
Only he understands
the rabid language of my heart
Le corbeau
Sous ma chemise
je porte la mort
tel un corbeau
apprenti de la parole
Il est seul à comprendre
le langage enragé de mon cœur
To my mother
You still weigh on me
like a tombstone
everywhere
stillness prevails
the wind is out of breath
I know not if it’s in me
or from elsewhere
that memory is stirred
dark marsh
whence you rise from the dead
to tie me up
with your umbilical cord
A ma mère
Tu pèses toujours sur moi
telle une pierre tombale
partout
l’immobilité règne
le vent est à bout de souffle
J’ignore si c’est en moi
ou depuis d’autres lieux
que se soulève la mémoire
obscur marécage
d’où tu ressuscites
pour me ligoter
avec ton cordon ombilical
The man no longer covers me
The man no longer covers me
I am alone
inside this skin
that fades
without warning me
of my death
The bread soon
will be eaten without me
L’homme ne me couvre plus
L’homme ne me couvre plus
je suis seule
sous cette peau
qui flétrit
sans me prévenir
de ma mort
Le pain bientôt
se mangera sans moi
By Anise Koltz
Translated by Anne-Marie Glasheen
From At the Edge of Night, bilingual English / French edition, introduced by Caroline Price, published by Arc Publications (2009). Part of the Visible Poets series edited by Jean Boase-Beier.
Thank you to Arc Publications for allowing us to publish these poems.
Anise Koltz was born in Luxembourg in 1928. She is first and foremost a poet, but is also a translator and photographer. She has written poetry in German and French, and also children’s books in Luxembourgish. In 1963 she founded and directed the Journées littéraires de Mondorf (Mondorf Literary Days), which brought together writers from all over the world, with the aim of establishing and maintaining links between the Luxembourg and the international literary scene. She continued in this role until 1974. In 1995, the Mondorf Literary Days were revived and it was decided that all genres would be represented, thereby providing a wide range of authors with a platform for their works.
Koltz is a member of the Académie Mallarmé (Paris), Pen-Club Belgium and the Institut Grand-Ducal des Arts et des Lettres (Luxembourg). She is one of the founding members and vice-president of The European Academy of Poetry. Over the years she has collaborated with, and translated, poets, writers and artists to create bibliophilic editions, has had a variety of works dedicated to her and has had poems set to music. Translations of her poetry have appeared in Belgium, Colombia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Macedonia, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden; she has received many prizes and awards for her poetry.
Anne-Marie Glasheen, poet, photographer and translator, with an English mother and Belgian father, spent her early childhood in Belgium. A past Chair of the Translators Association, Glasheen has translated fiction, non-fiction, plays, poetry and art history books. Her translated plays have been performed at the Edinburgh and Brighton festivals, in London, the USA and Northern Ireland. In 1998, she was the recipient of the Belgian francophone prize for translation.
She co-ordinates cultural exchange programmes and festivals, runs literary projects, gives public readings, lectures and broadcasts, runs workshops and writes articles. Her poetry has been published in poetry journals in Belgium, France, Ireland, Luxembourg, the UK and USA and her first collection appeared with Bradshaw Books in 2008.
As a photographer her work has been widely exhibited in and around London. Her first major show outside the UK was in Cork, Ireland, in October 2008. e past ten years he has lived in North Dorset and currently works as a copy editor.