Visitation, the long poem that begins Jacques Brault’s first collection, Mémoire (short extract with translation in this earlier post), is a complex evocation of cultural oppression and the poet’s sense of exile from self. It’s full of words and images that cannot but also evoke today’s physical exiles, the millions of refugees, and these suggested a much simpler and shorter erasure poem. French, with its changing word-endings, gives less scope for erasure than English, but the process was still an interesting way of engaging with language and emotions.
Remember
Remember your nakedness, their exile
the man struggling to live
I find myself again at the appointed place
and thirsty for these words
I left my country with little pride
Exile is hard, my fear follows me
Silence is no longer possible – listen
some evening to what I shall say
Come closer and touch my voiceless misery
my faceless body, my silent hope
Poetry has no importance, but it speaks
Sweet violence rises up
My despair arrives with broken neck
no name, no past and harbouring no hatred
Some grey morning a comrade I cannot name
and a beloved country tremble
I shall live weighed down and bent over
my words still resounding from land to land
A shadow will trace the outline
of your pale face when I find it again.
(words and phrases culled from Jacques Brault’s nearly 900-word-long poem, Visitation)
Souvenez-vous / de / votre nudité / de leur exil /
de celui qui a mal de vivre /
Je me retrouve / au / rendez-vous /
J’ai soif / de / ces paroles /
J’ai quitté / le pays / peu fier /
L’exil est dur / ma peur / me suit /
Je ne sais plus / me taire /
Ecoute / ce que / je / dirai / un soir /
Approche et / touche / ma misère / sans voix /
mon corps / sans visage / ma silencieuse espérance /
La poésie / est / sans importance / mais elle / parle /
La violence / douce / se relève /
Ma détresse / arrive / le cou brisé /
sans nom / sans passé / et sans haine /
Un matin gris / une /compagne / innommable /
et / un pays aimé tremblent /
Je vivrai / lourd et penché /
Mes mots / vibrent encore / entre terre et terre /
Une ombre / tracera /
ta figure blanche / retrouvée.
Image: Another Place — photo by Jean Morris, 2007
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- The Other (El Otro) by Rosario Castellanos
- Green Enchantment (Verde Embeleso) by Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz
- The discovery of things I’ve never seen: five poems by Oswald de Andrade
- A soft storm in the skull: three poems by Rubén Darío
- Eternity for an inheritance: eight poems by Amado Nervo
- Five translators, one poem: dreaming about caimans with José Santos Chocano
- Contrary Moon: three poems by Cecília Meireles
- Génesis doméstico / My Private Genesis by Teresa Calderón
- How to recognize the road: three more poems by Cecília Meireles
- Birds of smoke: two poems by José María Eguren
- Historia de mi muerte / Story of My Death by Leopoldo Lugones
- La blanca soledad / Pale Solitude by Leopoldo Lugones
- House without walls: two poems by Vinicius de Moraes
- Ajedrez / Chess by Jorge Luis Borges
- Where shall we go? (¿Can nelpa tonyazque?) by Nezahualcoyotl
- Four haiku and a severed head by Simone Routier
- Gotas de lluvia / raindrops: four more haiku and a tanka
- Sweet exiled words: two poems by José Luis Appleyard
- Pain without explanation: five poems by César Vallejo
- Si rigide le desert de l’Autre / So Rigid is the Desert of the Other by France Théoret
- Mapping a different star: five poems by Gabriela Mistral
- oh (ô) by Raôul Duguay
- Repetición de mi mismo / Repeating Myself by Ricardo Mazó
- Peuple inhabité / Population void by Yves Préfontaine
- Retrouvailles / Reunions by Anne Brunelle
- A genius for brevity: Alejandra Pizarnik
- Lo que soy / What I Am by Juana de Ibarbourou
- Emily Dickinson by Michel Garneau
- Intersections: reading, translation, writing
- Nameless as the rain: two poems by Jacques Brault
- Erasure translation of a poem by Jacques Brault
- Rafael Courtoisie’s Song of the Mirror (La canción del espejo): a videopoem by Eduardo Yagüe
- A glimpse from the gutter: three poems by Alejandra Pizarnik
- High Treason by José Emilio Pacheco
- Juarroz on waking up
- Under the Sky Born After the Rain, by Jorge Teillier
- To a Child in a Tree, by Jorge Teillier
- El hombre imaginario / The Imaginary Man by Nicanor Parra
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