By Fr éd éric Forte.
Four ‘flat sonnets’
(translations by J-J Poucel)
it’s a box to recollect ”¢ or lay low ”¢ some will eat marrow ”¢ not me I aim to resurrect / as an animal coming back ”¢ reincarnation in the end ”¢ by its awkward taste will offend ”¢ on horseback / but peering up a dress ”¢ simply isn’t done ”¢ just as the commonplace ”¢ won’t be broken / so I’ve spent my extended holiday in a tunnel ”¢ that’ll teach me for wanting to get all supernatural
oh my doll ”¢ I would that your learning would chart its own depths ”¢ you ought to be taking sensible steps ”¢ no and again no my doll / should a pressing iron perchance ”¢ take a tumble or a fall ”¢ it will not have been a bomb at all ”¢ something new in breaking shall enhance / that’s the way it is in Bruxelles ”¢ you remember that alley well ”¢ the sound of white pewter piddling / a king in open country again ”¢ you are laughing already riddling ”¢ dreaming up a future in champagne
a weapon and slumber Ӣ a cloud what is in it Ӣ a cockpit Ӣ then to find closure / or meditate the shapes of forever Ӣ I long for insight Ӣ with storms to unite Ӣ in darkness to gather / a hand on the grotto Ӣ could be a minnow Ӣ and why not / could be tomorrow Ӣ the day after tomorrow Ӣ stacked on its lot
by naked eye alone ”¢ the astronomer became ”¢ since names are needed he names ”¢ blinking to cross thresholds by billions / the recycled sheet ”¢ of aluminum ”¢ this one is Proxima that one is Rome ”¢ all within armchair’s reach / but only to collapse later ”¢ no longer granting such prime ”¢ importance to matter / or glass in scatter ”¢ being aether in aether ”¢ for all time
Four poems from Comment(s)
(translations by Michelle Noteboom)
Plenty of excitement
That being said: rain isn’t really an event, not really. Something like the exact opposite of Brigadoon which is a village in Scotland that doesn’t exist, or else only once a century, and only if someone sees it. And that’s what I call an event.
Sublime
“Platanist” is a solitary cetaceous word splashing about in the Ganges which we’re not sure, actually, what to do with.
Stunning
It’s not exciting to wait. In waiting rooms, at the doctor’s for example, you can see various magazines scattered across the coffee table, but it’s not exciting. Or when you wait for a bus at a bus stop, when you take the bus. It’s not exciting. Except in England. In England, when you take the bus, it’s always exciting. One February day, on a bus in England, I was talking with an English gentleman who was about sixty, who asked me what I thought of the upcoming war, who told me his son lived on the French Riviera near Monaco, that he’d been there once, that it was really lovely and my English was “really correct”. He had really nice manners, this English gentleman. It was exciting.
Masterful performance
Am I ridiculous at heart? And is it this game that brings me here? It’s a matter of order and disorder. If I’d lost an arm and someone handed me a spoon, would the memory be painful?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Fr éd éric Forte was born in Toulouse, France in 1973, and now lives in Paris. He is a poet and a member of the Oulipo since 2005. He now devotes himself entirely to writing. His books notably include Bristols (Hapax éditions, 2010), Une collecte (Th éâtre Typographique, 2009), Toujours perdue la neuve entr ée (contrat maint, 2009), Comment(s) (Editions de l’Attente, 2006), Op éras-minute (Th éâtre Typographique, 2005), N/S (Editions de l’Attente, 2004, cowritten with Ian Monk, in French and English), Banzuke (Editions de l’Attente, 2002) and Discographie (Editions de l’Attente, 2002).
Photo copyright : © Hermance Triay
