Marianne Catzaras [Tunisia / France]

 

 When The Birds
 
When the birds leave my body
I will lose the words
To enter my memory
 
When the wheat part my fingers
A landscape as old as the earth
Will rise
 
When the secret hides
Behind the trees
You will tell me I am cold
And the text will be swallowed up
By the archeology of the seas
There will be no more text
 
Only a botanic book
That  will  be opened
 To write about  the horizon
 
When the statues fall asleep
In my hands
When the flowers cover up the exile
Hastily
 
Then
Then
I will come back
Hanging on your youth
As a surprised traveller
I will plunge from the quays
Not understanding
The murmur of the sea
 
I – animal of the sands
I – clay, argil, seaweed
I will have seen nothing of the oceans
 
When the children on Good Friday
Will make the bouquets fly into pieces
 
When the sap flows over
The resin of the temples
When water mixed with  earth
Starts howling
 
Like  an indifferent city
Pompei will crowd the waiting rooms
And I will be carried away by old age
In the garden of stones.

 
(Translation by Sylvie Devos)
  
 
Over There
 
Over there
 at the edge of the world,
the impossible land returns to me
The grieving sea,
 the shattered jars
The half-open doors, then closed
Over there
 at the edge of the world,
when words reach the heights
The light will spell your name
In the shadow of the houses
Over there
 against the light,
I will let the shoreline enlighten  you
I will scour the landscape
The inventory of recovered pages and notes
Memories that whisper to the sun to stay
The surf clinging to words
The song caught in the rope
The tavern of the eve
The drama in the song
The stony road of Naxos
And snow-capped Olympus
The dusty wind of Aegina
Blind,
I will invent the shores
And the barren land will invite itself
to my bedside
 
(Translation by Sylvie Devos)
 
  
The Tumult
 
From what exile are we coming from ?
From what  stranded boat?
From which tumult
From what stalked night?
From what vanished body—
Too soon,
Parted,
Washed away.
When my eyes grope
In the dark.
 
From what shipwreck?
The country runs
Out of breath.
 
(Translation by Sylvie Devos)
 
 
Author’s Bionote:
 
*Marianne Catzaras is a poet and photographer. She was born in Tunisia to Greek parents.
After studying literature in the Sorbonne University (Paris), she devotes herself to photography. She starts her career by portraying minorities such as Gypsies from Greece or Black people from Djerba island. She uses writing and photography to transfigure reality between the languages and the countries in search of lost past. She exhibits in Tunisia, France, Italy, Germany, The USA, Egypt, Greece. She publishes artist notebooks and poetry collections. She won the Great Prize of the city of Tunis. In 2011, she was named Knight of Arts and Letters of the French Republic. Her career of poet leads her to have her texts edited by Actes Sud (France), Simpact (Tunisia), Electa (Italy), Pigy (Greece) and in international journals. Her poems are translated into Greek, Italian, Arabic. She is a guest of many poetry  festivals.She leads writing poetry workshops (Rome, Carthage). Her latest collection of poetry has been selected for the literary prize of high school students (Ile de France ). Marianne Catzaras lives in Tunis (Tunisia) and in Paris (France).