French Poems

Mer de miel

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

 Clouds in hte sunset, looking like a bright yellow sea, an orange coast and purple sky. An optic illusion above a real coast (not visible here).

Mer de miel
(Sète)

Levez vos yeux vers ce vitrail doré,
d’un jaune plus doux, d’un jaune plus pâle possible :
une baie cernée de hauts rochers
d’un bleu brumeux… Un crépuscule paisible.

Clignez vos yeux à ce vitrail distant,
mer de miel, montagne mauve, sauvage :
tout flotte au dessus de l’horizon –
des eaux de feu, une terre de nuages !

Ce paysage d’un or incomparable
s’évanouit et passe, une image…
Ou serait ça la côte impérissable
et notre terre et mer le grand mirage ?

Christina Egan © 2016

This poem takes up an idea from ancient pagan and Christian philosophy: our world may be only a pale reflexion of a higher, perfect, world. Those ‘heavens’, however, are an inaccessible and unimaginable place — beyond our universe — for which the visible sky is only an image.

The fiery sunset which took me quite literally ‘out of this world’ occurred in midwinter on one of the northernmost beaches of the Mediterranean, at the outskirts of Sète. For a daytime poem and photograph on the sea around Sète, see La Mer, enfin.

Clouds in the sunset, looking like a bright yellow sea, an orange coast and purple sky. An optic illusion above a real coast (also visible here).

Photographs: The sky above the coast in Sète, France. Christina Egan © 2016

dans le verre / Mother-of-Pearl

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

dans le verre

Glass screen with patterns in black, white and gold, resembling surf and seagulls.les couleurs de la mer
sont versées dans le verre
du présent du souvenir
faites-les resurgir

les couleurs de la mer
de l’argent jusqu’au vert
améthyste et saphir
laissez-les reluire

dans ce vers

Christina Egan © 2016

Mother-of-Pearl

The sea is not blue,
no more is the sky:
that is a child’s view,
a picture-book’s lie.

Whenever the rainbow
touches the sea,
it sprinkles a faint glow
of eternity.

From indigo ink,
to raspberry pink,
with peppermint green
and gold-leaf between…

The sea is not blue,
or grey of some hue:
the sea is a swirl
of mother-of-pearl!

Christina Egan © 2016

Photograph: ‘Rhizome’. Sculpture by Laurence Bourgeois (Lô).
Verse pattern of French poem after Jean-Yves Léopold (J. Y. L.).

Le vent de la mer se lève

~ Christina Egan ~ Leave a comment

Le vent de la mer se lève
(Alyscamps, Arles)

Tout doux, le vent de la mer se lève
parmi les colonnes à l’aube de l’an,
dans mon esprit réjouissant
ressuscitant mon ancien rêve,
un rêve de tuiles couleurs du couchant,
un rêve de murs couleurs océan.

Le vent se renforce et lève la sève
des hauts platanes le long de la rue,
ces forts piliers du ciel du Midi…
Mais quel tombeau révèle le rêve,
lieu lumineux et réapparu ?
Ô vent de la mer, Ô vent de ma vie !

Christina Egan © 2015

Wide avenue with sarcophagi to the left and right,leading to a mediaeval portal. Winter scene in fair weather, light-brown and light-blue.

Alyscamps, Arles. Photograph:  Christina Egan © 2010

 

The Wind from the Sea is rising
(Alyscamps, Arles)

The Wind from the Sea is rising, all mild,
between the columns and graves at the dawn
of the year, stirring up in my jubilant mind
my resplendent dream of antiquity,
a dream of tiles resembling the sun,
a dream of walls resembling the sea.

The wind is now swelling and ready to rouse
the sap in the plane-trees along the wide road,
those pillars supporting the sky of the South…
Which tomb may hold my mystery of old,
the luminous place that has just reappeared?
O Wind from the Sea, O wind of my soul!

Christina Egan © 2016

Painting by van Gogh: Avenue with very high trees, with path and foliage in bright orange, sarcophagi and sky in blue.

The Roman cemetery known as the Alyscamps has been immortalised by Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh.

Vincent van Gogh: L’Allée des Alyscamps (1888). Photograph: Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

You can read an English and German poem about a Roman road in France at Where Road and River Meet / Überm Fluß .