25 DECEMBER
The crows go cross cross cross across my old furrowed field
My old delightful skies a crime for them to nail their futureless wishes there
It rises above the blackest cloud you ever believed
The town is cold the heart is bare
The fir-tree shines they decorate it as befits a branch that’s dead
And on the satellite dish what parable of bird.
My muddy paths my sunken paths my little shoe sinks in
And lasts until the tarmac where I’ve got two feet again
Something is stumbling limping running on empty
No happy element no snow no everlasting father
Snow and after that the mud the early spring the almost blue
Perhaps the warbler-footprint of delight.
The road from cradle to grave presents a few mean stones
Sharp stones in thousands
That remember all our little shoes
From pram to tumulus from dainty baby-wrap to cumulus
Sheep’s-wool to marble to the last evaporated breath
We don’t know what it is.
25 DÉCEMBRE
Les corbeaux font croix croix croix croix par-dessus tous mes vieux sillons
Tous mes vieux cieux délit si eux ils clouent des vœux sans avenir
Ça monte au-dessus du nuage le plus noir qu’on a jamais cru
La ville est froide et le cœur nu
Le sapin brille on l’enguirlande comme il faut une branche morte
Sur la parabole quel oiseau
Mes chemins boueux chemins profonds j’y enfonce un petit soulier
Et il dure jusqu’au macadam où j’ai maintenant les deux pieds
Quelque chose cloche ou boite à vide
Manque la neige l’élément heureux sans paternel sempiternel
La neige et puis ensuite le boueux l’avant printemps le presque bleu
L’empreinte fauvette de joie peut-être
La route du berceau à la tombe offre quelques méchants cailloux
Des blessants cailloux par milliers
Qui n’oublient nos petits souliers
De la poussette au tumulus du joli lange au cumulus
De la laine du mouton au marbre au dernier souffle évaporé
Nous ne savons pas ce que c’est.
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for Fabienne
By the time we finished talking it has snowed
We’d laughed and sighed like a pair of sisters
Can you see this caribou from your window it’s a cloud
A moose an ermine little moving fox
It changes every moment changes to sky-blue sky
If the night has stars in it it’s a promise of blue
Have you checked out the chimney-stacks the great she-bears
We ought to see oceans more
We shouldn’t need a second glance to make out a giraffe
All white white white white where you are as well?
A squid a cuttlefish an octopus might add a splash of ink
All white white white without red rabbit eyes
We mustn’t make each other late time’s getting on I’d better go
There are some in dotty frocks and some in geometric shapes
And oh I almost forgot
Old things float up and new ones too
A slotted spoon a convalescence or a precious stone
Jewel of sleeping water there was a cat called that
It was
Drowned jewel
Clouds don’t miaow though jewellery can trickle down
When we stopped our oneversation we came down as snow.
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pour Fabienne
Quand nous cessâmes de parler il a neigé
Nous avions ri et soupiré comme deux sœurs
Vois-tu ce caribou par ta fenêtre c’est un nuage
Un élan une hermine un petit renard mouvant
Change tout le temps change en ciel ciel
Si la nuit s’étoile elle promet du bleu
As-tu vérifié ourses et cheminées
On devrait voir plus souvent un océan
On devrait du premier coup reconnaître une girafe
Blanc blanc blanc blanc chez toi aussi?
Une pieuvre un poulpe un octopousse encreraient bien
Blanc blanc blanc blanc et sans les yeux rouges du lapin
Ne nous mettons pas en retard l’heure tourne allons
Il y en a à robes à pois d’autres à trapèzes
J’allais oublier
Des choses anciennes flottent à la surface et des nouvelles aussi
Une écumoire une convalescence un joyau
Bijou d’eau dormante c’était le nom d’un chat
Ce fut
Noyau
Les nuages ne miaulent pas les bijoux coulent par contre…
Quand nous a cessé de parler il neigeâmes.
*
What time is it I’m happy there’s a tree
The war atomic power happy there’s a tree
That thousand billionth bird wiped out a tree
The promise of a forest of forgetting of I’m off
What time of evening like what time of morning
Here’s a tree straight up and filling both my eyes
The page the landscape or the window you could say
A human being dying every second there’s a tree
Where the girl in the swing is swinging herself to air
La joie in what times countries if you like de vivre
There is a tree, though, just here right outside
From rise to set its forking lines connect
The moon and sun the sun and moon
A tree that travels perfectly a tree.
*
Il est quelle heure je suis heureuse il y a un arbre
La guerre le nucléaire heureuse il y a un arbre
Ce mille milliardième oiseau éteint un arbre
Une promesse de forêt d’oubli de je m’en vais
Quelle heure du soir comme du matin
Un arbre dressé franc qui remplit mes deux yeux
La page le paysage la fenêtre aussi bien
Un humain par seconde meurt il y a un arbre
Où la fille à l’escarpolette en l’air s’envoie
La joie en quels temps pays de vivre quoi
Il y a un arbre n’empêche pile juste ici
Levant couchant il tient en embranchement
La lune et le soleil le soleil et la lune
Un arbre un arbre voyageur impeccable.
By Valérie Rouzeau
Translated by Susan Wicks
Poems from Talking Vrouz by Valérie Rouzeau, translated by Susan Wicks, published by Arc Publications (2013)
Thank you to Arc Publications for allowing us to publish these extracts.
Valérie Rouzeau was born in 1967 in Burgundy, France and now lives in a small town near Paris, Saint-Ouen, well-known for its flea-market. She has published a dozen collections of poems, including Pas revoir (l’Idée Bleue, 1999), Va où (Le Temps qu’il Fait, 2002) and more recently Apothicaria (Wigwam, 2007) and Mange-Matin (l’Idée Bleue, 2008). She has also published volumes translated from Sylvia Plath, William Carlos Williams, Ted Hughes and the photographer Duane Michals. She is the editor of a little review of poetry for children (from 5 to 117 years old) called dans la lune and lives mainly by her pen through public readings, poetry workshops in schools, radio broadcasts and translation.
Valérie was selected to represent France in the 2012 Cultural Olympiad Poetry Parnassus in London.
Susan Wicks, poet and novelist, was born in Kent, England, in 1947. She read French at the universities of Hull and Sussex, and wrote a D. Phil. thesis on André Gide. She has lived and worked in France, Ireland and America and has taught at the University of Dijon, University College Dublin and the University of Kent. She is the author of five collections of poetry including Singing Underwater (1992), which won the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize, and The Clever Daughter (1996), which was short-listed for both the T. S. Eliot and Forward Prizes, and she was included in the Poetry Society’s ‘New Generation Poets’ promotion in 1994. A short memoir, Driving My Father, was published in 1995. She is also the author of two novels, The Key (1997), the story of a middle-aged woman haunted by the memory of a former lover, and Little Thing (1998), an experimental novel about a young Englishwoman living and teaching in France. Her most recent book of poems, De-iced, came out from Bloodaxe in 2007, and a book of short stories, Roll Up for the Arabian Derby, from Bluechrome in 2008.
Photo of Valérie Rouzeau by Tony Ward