Woman
Woman bark of tree, a longing to return to the very
first
Word of the plant alphabet
Woman ash, the thickness of words
Worked by the earth
Woman wave, reflection of the rock made of syllables
In the shimmering silk of hesitant stammers
Woman birth, foam where nestles
The bird on the wrathful day of the gods
Woman cloud, the swell of cumulus
In the space reddened by proposals
Woman fairy, a hand laid on the anguish of
The world, guarding our sleeping
Woman flame, like the blond open wings
Of a sigh freed by a gentle caress
Woman lightning, star of the hope of the first heard
sentence
Of the loved one, until the cosmic embrace
Woman light, transparent shell of the
Veil, on the continent of wedding celebrations until
The bodies are alike
Woman justice, layer upon layer of faces
Between scales and sword, who shout for equality
Woman music, flowing water carried to the
Unending end of the world, Aphrodite choir of the
songs of
Solidarity
Woman clad of the naked grace of her silence
which carries in the words of skin-deep wounds
freedom
[translation into English by H.Stafford]
Wisdom
The secret facet of the diamond
The impossible truth
The intimacy of breath
The ink, congealed on the paper.
The presence of silence
At the moment of death
Strangers
To be lost in the torment of
An ancient word
I dreamt the wonderment of the sun
On the white stone
And the moon water enveloped in the night
On the window pane of time buzzes
A dragonfly
To become
The silence
The rest
The passage
The exile
The common shadow
The common misery
The erring
The thirst
The absolute
The desert of the soul
The source of joy
The bitter
The infinite
The grain of sand
The star
The words, celestial bodies
A perpetual interrogation beyond death
Absence of face
And as exile, the same word
And for journey the stare of the same
Water
And for luggage the love of the self-same fire.
[translation into English by H.Stafford]
Exile
A thorn holds me tight
Stopping me from forgetting
The shirt of the dead
In the body of words
The trees of the way
Ghosts who don’t come back
To eat of the night
A branch of bramble
Death becomes a garden
I thought you were a clearing
Here you are in between intertwined branches
In the great sorrow of death
Our soon-to-be mother
The birds of lies
Among the dead
Of the hungry earth.
As tremble the word, so too tremble
The sound
And like birds in a foreign land
On the way off they go, walking with the dead.
[translation into English by H.Stafford]
Author’s Bionote :
*Nicole Barriere: Poet, writer, essayist, translator. Director tonic Accent collection by Editions L'Harmattan. Member of the International Association of Literary Critics. By engaging militant way for women and peace, it launched in 2001 a call to poets from around the world: '1001 poems for peace and democracy in Afghanistan". She defends the Francophonie, endangered languages and cultures. Awards: European Grand Prix of the East-West Cuerta de Arges festival in Romania in July 2010 - Simone Landry female Poetry Prize 2011, France - Honorary Award for lifetime achievement in 2011, Lebanon - Poetry prize Premio Internazionale Don Luigi Di Liegro, Rome 2014 - Poetry prize Menada Tetova, North Macedonia, 2016.