Prologue
There,
I’m going to begin writing again and the only face and name you will have will
be the happiness of infinitely being and it will be for you, but you will be no
one, for you will not want to be named, or exclusively loved, and you will
remain secret, like an unknown treasure, like a precious and unrecognised
thing, like a wild but nameless hope.
There, I’m going to begin writing again, what had been broken by death will begin once more to bloom beneath your impersonal gaze, beneath your sightless eyes, there will be a heart of snow in the glove of night. Hands will stretch forth, offering themselves, they will bring warmth back to the heart that will be a mere flake, a snowy feather placed upon the night’s glove.
I shall begin writing again and you will not be able to erase it, it will be the unerasableness of our meeting in the shock of the sea upon our breath, there will be nothing but the breathing wake in the seas of our lives, a guitar we cannot play, a ribbon in the shape of a philosopher’s stone, a tuppenny tarot card. In the boat sailing beyond its wake, there will be the whiteness of forgetting. You, adventurer, voyager, will be caught up in the intense storm of forgetting.
You will belong to the family of signs, a silence, raining down, and every day these words for you who will fiercely erase them or seek to do so despite the ink that takes its humble clawed hold on the paper.
I’m carrying on writing this morning, for the Christmas mornings when the child bears up in her arms the gifts, for the pink laurel touching my window, blotting it out in a greenness yet opening to the light.
For the olive tree tangled with the electricity pole, inseparably, for the gardener sweeping up a few pink flowers at his front door, for your face with its true gaze, naked at last, almost blind, outside, upon the innerness of a shock of light.
I’m carrying on writing for the palm tree fallen in the dull thud of the earth.
I’m carrying on writing for the paintings of a deep conflagration, for the lost bird’s nests, for our dead brothers, for the chain saw that cuts the tree into logs, for the red balloon rising up into the uplifted sky.
I’m carrying on writing for the look in your eyes, that simple, clear, offered look, for the snowy heart on a child’s mittens.
I have followed the imprint in the snow, a fragile bird with its tiny legs. I have followed the trace of your body embedding within mine the star of an absence, for the lost breath of my mother, for the face of Algeria, and the Sahara, for the endless dunes.
There was the wildness of the place, the devastation of a love refusing to be spoken, the tears ripped from eyes and the inner howl of a text I offer to one who does not know it is offered.
(Translated
by Michael Bishop)
(from
“Dialogue with the unnamed” / “Dialogue avec l’anonyme”, 2018, Éditions
Collodion, Prix
Vénus Khoury-Ghata 2019)
The
Swing
I’ll
hold your hand, little lark
There is the torso of light in the white mornings
The chain shining about your neck
The blue-grey sea upon the no man’s land of the shores
We walk along by the sea of blood, tears, and laughter
Blue-grey in the tearing wind
You felt suddenly dizzy in the white morning
Everything spun about in white time
The time of childhood mornings and those of other loves
And those of other mournings and those of other lives
Everything spun about in time and would not stop dancing
In the midst of your face there were other faces
Mornings spiralled into other mornings
Whiteness had the thickness of snow
In the light shone red pigments
In the fresco other collapsed characters
Morning was dancing in its powderiness
A child would rise in the morning
In the tumble of the infinite
She will hold your hand, little lark
(from
“Dialogue with the unnamed”/ “Dialogue avec l’anonyme”, 2018, Éditions
Collodion, Prix
Vénus Khoury-Ghata 2019)
Inscribing
the face
I
remember a smile, an intonation like an inner voice speaking.
The smoothness of the warm stomach beneath the hand.
When one ends up on the sand.
I would like to define the circle from mouth to gaze.
The tree that opens up to springtime.
The curtain of the bougainvilleas and the mauve blooming of the blinds.
We pretended to be asleep beneath the mysteries of houses offered to the wind.
We lived in imaginary bungalows covered in seaweed.
We went swimming on deserted beaches disappearing beneath the ample shores.
We stayed there, lost, and my hand was burning in yours not knowing what was moving through our lives.
We couldn’t speak pain for we were had no right to speak of a nameless, faceless pain.
We thrust aside the very sensation of flowers to be available to the gap opening up in the world.
In the crack as violent as a tattooing the circle of a mouth sought to inscribe itself.
Upon the curve of a mouth
The brilliance of a smile come and gone.
I had begun to live in a no-place.
(Translated
by Michael Bishop)
(from
“Two Landscapes so as, Between Them, to Sleep” / “Deux Paysages pour entre les
deux dormir,”, Éditions VVV, 2019)
Author’s
Bionote:
There, I’m going to begin writing again, what had been broken by death will begin once more to bloom beneath your impersonal gaze, beneath your sightless eyes, there will be a heart of snow in the glove of night. Hands will stretch forth, offering themselves, they will bring warmth back to the heart that will be a mere flake, a snowy feather placed upon the night’s glove.
I shall begin writing again and you will not be able to erase it, it will be the unerasableness of our meeting in the shock of the sea upon our breath, there will be nothing but the breathing wake in the seas of our lives, a guitar we cannot play, a ribbon in the shape of a philosopher’s stone, a tuppenny tarot card. In the boat sailing beyond its wake, there will be the whiteness of forgetting. You, adventurer, voyager, will be caught up in the intense storm of forgetting.
You will belong to the family of signs, a silence, raining down, and every day these words for you who will fiercely erase them or seek to do so despite the ink that takes its humble clawed hold on the paper.
I’m carrying on writing this morning, for the Christmas mornings when the child bears up in her arms the gifts, for the pink laurel touching my window, blotting it out in a greenness yet opening to the light.
For the olive tree tangled with the electricity pole, inseparably, for the gardener sweeping up a few pink flowers at his front door, for your face with its true gaze, naked at last, almost blind, outside, upon the innerness of a shock of light.
I’m carrying on writing for the palm tree fallen in the dull thud of the earth.
I’m carrying on writing for the paintings of a deep conflagration, for the lost bird’s nests, for our dead brothers, for the chain saw that cuts the tree into logs, for the red balloon rising up into the uplifted sky.
I’m carrying on writing for the look in your eyes, that simple, clear, offered look, for the snowy heart on a child’s mittens.
I have followed the imprint in the snow, a fragile bird with its tiny legs. I have followed the trace of your body embedding within mine the star of an absence, for the lost breath of my mother, for the face of Algeria, and the Sahara, for the endless dunes.
There was the wildness of the place, the devastation of a love refusing to be spoken, the tears ripped from eyes and the inner howl of a text I offer to one who does not know it is offered.
There is the torso of light in the white mornings
The chain shining about your neck
The blue-grey sea upon the no man’s land of the shores
We walk along by the sea of blood, tears, and laughter
Blue-grey in the tearing wind
You felt suddenly dizzy in the white morning
Everything spun about in white time
The time of childhood mornings and those of other loves
And those of other mournings and those of other lives
Everything spun about in time and would not stop dancing
In the midst of your face there were other faces
Mornings spiralled into other mornings
Whiteness had the thickness of snow
In the light shone red pigments
In the fresco other collapsed characters
Morning was dancing in its powderiness
A child would rise in the morning
In the tumble of the infinite
She will hold your hand, little lark
The smoothness of the warm stomach beneath the hand.
When one ends up on the sand.
I would like to define the circle from mouth to gaze.
The tree that opens up to springtime.
The curtain of the bougainvilleas and the mauve blooming of the blinds.
We pretended to be asleep beneath the mysteries of houses offered to the wind.
We lived in imaginary bungalows covered in seaweed.
We went swimming on deserted beaches disappearing beneath the ample shores.
We stayed there, lost, and my hand was burning in yours not knowing what was moving through our lives.
We couldn’t speak pain for we were had no right to speak of a nameless, faceless pain.
We thrust aside the very sensation of flowers to be available to the gap opening up in the world.
In the crack as violent as a tattooing the circle of a mouth sought to inscribe itself.
Upon the curve of a mouth
The brilliance of a smile come and gone.
I had begun to live in a no-place.
*Béatrice Bonhomme (born in Algiers, Algeria) is a professor emeritus at the Université Côte d’Azur in Nice (France), a poet, an editor, and a literary critic. In 1994, she founded Revue “NU(e)”, a journal of poetry and art. She heads La Société des Lecteurs de Pierre Jean Jouve and has published numerous articles and books on contemporary poets, including several proceedings from the Cerisy conference. In 2012, Peter Lang published a book dedicated to her, reviewing the body of poetry she has been building since 1991. Two journals, “Poésie-sur-Seine” and “Coup de soleil”, were dedicated to her (2020–21), as well as numerous scholarly studies. In 2016, she was awarded the Léopold Sédar Senghor Prize by the Cénacle Européen—in recognition of her research contributing to the recognition of contemporary poetry. In 2019, her book “Dialogue avec l’Anonyme” received the Vénus Khoury-Ghata Prize. “Monde, genoux couronnés” (Collodion) was honored with the 2023 Mallarmé Prize. In 2025, she published “Murmurations des oiseaux” with La Rumeur libre, which received the Roger Caillois Prize. She has just been awarded the Académie Française Prize for promoting the French language and literature and for her work in support of poetry.
(Photo by Aurélie Macarri, Université Côte d'Azur)