My former gods are the poets that I read and reread often, who rocked my sleepless nights, who spun the wool of my first emotions, who spoke to me in the hollow of my ear and heart. Have they mattered to me as much as my loves? They have merged, fused, amalgamated so that one can no longer look at my corpse to differentiate what comes from them and what is only mine.
Are they not our masters?
Our teachers of tongues?
Our guardians of the Being?
After having written litany about the heroes who shaped us in clay and alchemy, I can no longer distinguish them from the supermen who populated my childhood dedicated to love. These gods of beauty, these superhumans whose rhythmic paths have welcomed my first steps, my first rhymed, scribbled, smudged in a reluctant patois that smelled Bledina.
I pushed vigorously in their shadow and laughter
these gods have taught me everything, everything of value
righteousness and love, anger and spirit
the strength to be silent and the rage to write.
These gods were in a circle around me, I was not ten years old. In turn, they told me words that my emotion took for slanders. I have no recollection of it. As soon as they spoke, all their words faded away.
It took me patience and time. I had to go to school, high school, middle school. It took me the verses of Lagarde and Michard to discover Verlaine, Aragon, René Char, Ferré, Brel, Brassens, Prévert, Rimbaud, Gainsbourg, Rabelais, Victor Hugo, Molière — before such a ballet my mind was excited.
Is that the way people live? And their kisses are following them as revolved suns.
He who comes into the world to disturb nothing deserves neither consideration nor patience.
And if God really existed – as said Bakhounine, this vitamin comrade – we should get rid of him.
An artist is someone who suffers for the other.
The gods are always hungry, never get enough / And this is death and death ever renewed.
Hurry up, picnic on the grass, as one day the grass will picnic on you.
I wrote silences, nights, I noted the inexpressible. I noted dizziness.
I wish the earth stops to go down.
Science without conscience is a soul’s decay.
My friends, remember this: there is no bad weed or bad men. There are only bad farmers.
My childhood is over
It was the adolescence
And the wall of silence
One morning broke
This was the first flower
And the first girl
The first kind
And the first fear
I was flying, I swear,
I swear I flew
My heart opened its arms,
I was no longer barbarian.
And the war came,
Here we are tonight
My dark love of bitter orange
My windy song along the range
My shady place where comes dreamy
To die the sea
My sweet month of August where rain
Some stars on the quiet mountain
My moving dream with walls of palm
Blue air is calm
Nobody knows know what is coming
It may well be this evening
That the linen will be trace
Over my face*
*Louis Aragon (1897-1982) is a French poet and novelist. With André Breton he founded the surrealist movement. He translated Lewis Caroll. He fought as a journalist for the French Communist Party, of which he was a member. Anti-franquist, he wrote about the Spanish War and composed countless love poems for Elsa Triolet.
But none of this mattered to me. What touched me were the music that Léo Ferré put on his poems.
Jean Ferrat has tried too, except for his “What would I be without you?” he doesn’t like me. His music sounds like an exercise. He sings with tremolos, yes, but where is the emotion?
And on Aragon the wonderful, others have also done what they could. Nothing is better than Leo, as I think goes back to childhood. Leo the immortal anarchist to whom Aragon dared prefer Ferrat the communist. Support required between members of the party.
All tricks aside, from the strict point of view of art, I like Leo l’anar a hundred times better. Brassens also sang it, it passes, he is almost anar. A little homey, certainly, but what a poet!
My first master is poetry. She has consoled me with many sorrows, and still sticks to it when nostalgia grieves me at the throat or when love torments me.
What do you think? I love my whole life. Mine is far from over. I’ll take another ten years. I like twenty or thirty just as much.
Aragon often launched
His choruses to the wind
I want to sing like he did
When he wrote
At the Café de Saint-Germain
The words took me by the hand.
Before the hearth of the past
Yesterday ended
To blacken to burn
And you were sleeping
Let the next day come
The words took me by the hand.
I was fifteen years old, the age of all folies. Channeled through writing. To drawing. To painting. To music. To my many loves. I drew them. I painted their sweet faces. I made poems for them. I was also crazy about Rimbaud. To think that he wrote these immortal rhymes, he was not sixteen:
She was very undressed
And tall prying trees
To the windows threw their leafy
Malinement, close, close.
Sitting on my big chair,
Half-naked, she joined hands.
On the floor shivered with ease
Her little feet so thin, so thin.
– I looked, color of wax
A small bush ray
Fluttering in her smile
And on her breast, – fly to the rose. (…)
The little feet under the shirt
Ran away: “Will you finish!”
– The first boldness permitted,
Laughter pretended to punish!
I can get dressed again. How do I compete?
Our masters crush us, is that how they teach?
I’m ready to settle
The best of my heart
in the hope of matching
the gift of my conquerors
down here I am naked
when I think of our kings
how did they come
I think about it and then I’m cold
I am alone and I’m cold
it’s late and I believe
that I just have to throw myself away
under the train to forget
Are the gods poets?
They had to be
to leave us these beauties.
So many wonders to behold!
Poets, in any case,
are revered gods.
Their song will not die.
Their name may die
we will always sing
their melodies of love.
Thus
Sadly
Here
Disarming
To the winds
Scented
Smoke
From before
The dead gods
Who have not seen
Our mistakes
Remorseless
They are going in the same steps
Of the three sons of Adam
Grinding teeth
On the threshold of death
They are ten great gods
Oliphant Bells
Ten hateful tyrants
Child abusers
Old gods from the heavens
Commuters
In axle-less trolleys
Human Eaters
Having lived so long
They have never won
In a deep sleep
The value of years
So many old times have left them
Those of the old gods who are still
That at the bottom of the world they are recluse
The weight of blood nailing their bodies
Do they still have in their hands of gold
Having an impossible deal
Between their soul and their old body
That last impulse that falls asleep?
The memory of the good old days
So cruel is the destiny
Hiding their fate
Of the almighty murdered
No longer performing wonders
In the spring of their icy hearts
Eyes half closed they watch
Envious of their past exploits
May such happiness be their delight
From the bottom of their being
At the end of the banquet of life
At least trying to appear
Having built the foundation
Did they not deserve better
That a paradise by their actions
Where are they sentenced to death?
When the goddesses
From before
Who leave them
Often
Will come back
Down here
Towards the future
Gaping
Will they trace
A blessing or a curse
Fine lace
Or sad curlers
Will they have odds
To forgive sins
On the knees
of the old, drunk gods
Or will they throw
Strong lightning bolts
Just to allow
God save the old
Gods of heaven they’ll be
Who will make shame on me
When compared to their song
All mine are silly wrong
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