BY MARIE DE QUATREBARBES / OCTOBER 2019
POETRY
ALEJANDRA
BY MARIE
DE QUATREBARBES
Original poem in French - Translated by the Wedgie editors.
Alejandra
For Alejandra Pizarnik, Argentine poet (1936-1972).
Dance, you loner
pull the pig’s tail
of things colourful
a small pungent rose
blind lamp
emaciated bat
cremation of pink lisping weather
In startled culottes
that lick crown bite
the silver paper
and there: the lilac flower
a giant alphabet
the wind, the accomplice
Surviving
with a stick of pink chalk
on a bed of dry leaves
a puppy’s skull
outliving the living
in a stick of chalk
the microbial adventure
an ant on your foot
Girl say something
say spill your blood
on the black rocks
the red is alive
and has survived the wounds
open in the blood
Open the yellow notebook
tell us about a Russian forest
and the snowmen
brought here in order to please
at this stage she concedes
ice under the knife
the pond full of fish
in the depths of reason
Buried under the ice
in the place where the tree stands
measure amongst foliage
the weight of the tree rooted
like a clematis of yellow times
carved in the tree
Turn your sail
under the land site of an idea
the tunnel is in song
in the garden in the evening
in her turns the sail
circles round in your weakness
made for crying
whilst spinning an idea
And the enormous wasps
concealing under the arcades
of astonishment and death
foreign to the idea
of sky embryos
poplars under the sail
A page wrapped
in global instruction
moves eye to water
the triangulate garden
orange blossom
saturated in the bees
grasping under the waist
like fragment of yellow times
The premises are sowed
lost in the zone
light in the open air
of corolla in bleach
color the same zone
by the open squares.
Marie de Quatrebarbes lives and works in Paris. She has published a few poetry collections and a novel, John Wayne is under my bed (cipM, 2018). Her latest poetry collection Voguer was published by P.O.L in 2019. She has led numerous translation and publishing projects and has been the co-editor of the magazine "La tête et les cornes" since 2014.