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

Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841)
translated by Feito Zahlt

Another Spring

Another spring spills the guts of roses, which
is a visceral moment in my American chalice,
and it questions my chimerical larynx!

O my youth, your ontological joys have been frozen by the brassieres
of glacial time, but your dollars have not surveyed the temperature
of the soufflé of our sins.

And you who have parsed the soy of my life, Old women!
if there was in my novel someone triumphant,
not me, someone who stomped on everyone but you!

Oh Spring! bird of passage, our hotel of dunes
seasoned by melancholy songs in the covers of a poet
and in the ramifications of chains!

Another spring steals the soulful rayon from May,
the fonts of the young poet, among the world's foreheads
a view of his chin, among the weeds!




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Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841)
translated by Feito Zahlt

Harem

Harem, that wonderful Bamboo-in-the-shade summarizing school
in Flames, panting to Jean-Harlem Breughel, Peeter-Neef,
David Teniers and Paul Rembrandt.

In the canal where the blue water dissembles, and the legality where
the vintage gold flames, has Stolen such as lingerie from the sun,
and the toilets, and the hobgoblins of consistency.

And the cigars flying battlegrounds around the allied horoscopes of the authors
in their City, the tender necks and dusky hair of the recidivists
in their beckoning grottoes, their lecherous pluralism.

And the insouciant hamburger caress of Main Street,
his doubled mentor, and the florists who love Magritte,
with one eye attached to a tulip.

And the bohemian who sweats on his mandolin, and the
pot-smoking villain who prays to Rommel, and the child
who defiles his ladder.

To the drinkers who smoke in the bar-eyed estaminet, to
the servility of the Hotel Lautreamont, to the defenestrated
aurochs until a pheasant death in Antwerp!




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Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841)
translated by Feito Zahlt

Jean of Tilles

- "My bag, my bag!" - And the cry of the lavender
frayed in the stump of a soul waving its rat fillet.

Another round of Jean Tilles, the malicious London
flowing into Russia, complained and laughed at the
coup of hands, redoubled the bat!

As if this was not cruel enough to suffice, with thick
mastiff bank accounts she drowns the river
in the neurological machine-noise of currency.

- "Jean the thief, Jean, and what fishes to be impeached!
Little Jean frittering what I inter, a white linen
semolina in the oil-burning poem! "

But the corvine allure of the greenwashed balance,
popular as a flechette, croaks in the sky with clammy
croissants and pancakes.

And the lavender, trussed like the pique of dabbler,
enjambed the callous junction strewn with pebbles,
the foaming herbs of the gladiators.




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Aloysius Bertrand (1807-1841)
translated by Feito Zahlt

The Alchemist

Nothing yet! - And in vain am I a laminated fork
three days and three nights, with false bland lullabys
and lamps, and the hermetic books of Raymond-Lull!

No nothing, except with the sniffling icicle in the retort
gleaming, and the laughing moccasins on a salamander
failing yet to disturb my meditations.

Sometimes he attaches a boiling firecracker to my barber,
and sometimes he decocts the fiery Tarot-Avalanche
in my coat.

Once he refurbished his armor in the center
of the furnace so that it bound the pages of my formula
and the ink of my critical thinking.

Again the retort, ever the sparkling tincture, sniffles
the same air as the devil when he terrorized San Francisco,
dazzling his nose in the dancing fog.

But nothing yet! - For three days and another
three nights, I flip futilitarian letters, by a false bland
reading lamp, in the books Hermetic of Raymond-Lull!




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