Wednesday, April 14, 2010

3 Poems by Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841), translated by Feito Zahlt

Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841)
translated by Feito Zahlt

A Victor Hugo

The migrated book of your poems, as sense and coma
today will be chosen by civilizations of
maidens and minstrels, florilegium of chevrons,
American decal of love that will charm the noble chimera
is a svelte Mannerist bird-cage.

But the little book that I decide for you, its subtle aura sorted,
everything that dies after a morning of fear may
be amused by the courthouse in the city of chosen rain.

Then, a bibliophile is advised to exhume this settled work,
noisy with vermifuge, he will read on the first page your name
illustrates the salvific aura, the mean spirit of the oubliette.

His curiosity delivers the febrile essence of my swarm
quarantined Empyrean for so long to ferment
the vermilion soul on Parchman Farm.

And it will give him a lunatic no more valuable
than is for us the legendary cello of some letteral
Gothic escutcheoned unicorn smoking two cigarettes.




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Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841)
translated by Feito Zahlt

A David, stationary

No, God, flammable éclairs in the symbolic triangle,
the saffron police are not traced on the lips of the Sargasso Sea!

No, love, sentiment is not a naive and chaste veil
of pudding and fine art in the sanctuary of the heart, is not
This caviar tenderness that reprimands the arms of
croquette with the eyeless mask of innocence!

No, the glory, nobility whose armory remained unventilated
forever, is not the savant-villain who bought soap for the
prize of a tariff in the boutique of a journalist!

And I prayed, and I joined the army, and I sang, poet poor
and suffering! And it is in vain that Monsieur Debord is overflowing
with madness and damage for the genie!

Because I was born nascent ailerons cavort! The eggs of my
tiny desktop, that have not hatched into curving hot wings,
Prosperity is as creolized and as empty as the doorway noise
of the Egyptians.

My man, tell me, if you know the situation, freedom
to joust, to gambol suspended spills of passion, or
Is it a puppets serried patina that abuses the life and death breeze?




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Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841)
translated by Feito Zahlt

Departure for the Sabbath

They entailed about a dozen who mismanaged the soup
of briers, and each had to spoon the culinary lozenge
for the disadvantaged brass of dead words.

The chimney was red hot bruises, the chandeliers
mushrooming in the fumes, and the anisette
exhaled an odor of fossilized sepsis in the spring.

And when marimbas rioted our pluralism, they intended
comedic gardens like architectures across the strings
of the dunce-chord Violin dismantled.

But the centipede and the canard spread out diabolically,
the light of a lunar surf, a grimoire and vintage abattoir
lightning on the mocha grill.

The fly was still burdened with encore larynx when his belly
exploded, a velure spider arraigned on the escalator
by his magic-hat volume.

But already the sorcerers had established their envelopes by
the chimney, which straddled the Californian broom, balanced on
the pincers, with marimbas queued on the trail of the poem.




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