Marilyn Kallet
(USA)
In Translation
So they weren’t naked butts, they were street soldiers,
the ones that Rimbaud skipped to Paris for, thugs
who tore him up.
So much depends upon translation. They were ruffians,
home-grown militia, the people’s army,
not the mayor’s high-hatted well-cushioned
sots.
And since it’s all a metaphor for love, for you and me,
can we translate war, the so-called good guys,
their back-room barracks?
Metaphor pales beside
bullets. Torn boys.
Where can we go from here?
Back into the streets with the ghosts of poets
who wanted to liberate something—Paris, mind,
body.
Ah! There’s something Madame can work with.
Rip the doors off their jambs!
Let’s at least have the courage
to love with our claws.
Free each other from your church,
my vows. I is someone else––or could be.
The revolution begins here, dear
great soul.
We won’t speak
of collateral damage.
Falling Out
According to Le Monde, désamour reigns
between nations, which means
falling out of love,
Triptik
to forget it.
Dice your love
and make
a tapenade.
Serve on hard toast.
I have tried falling out,
my yearning
more rock wall
than slide.
Let’s scale
down,
deescalate
to mere
crush.
Désamour.
Désamour mucho.
Can’t come back
to never.
What does wind
know, stripping limbs?
According to Le Monde,
there has been a
decrescendo,
but in my dreams
your face is sharp,
foreground to infinity.
You are
mountains
waving yoo-hoo
to molehills,
nothing gained or lost.
In this country of mistrals
you are no less
beautiful,
at home in fierce wind.
I translate your flesh
into words,
your beauty
a touch
less ravaging
in song.
First published in War, Literature & The Arts: Peace Folio, 2017.
Not Found
“The word you searched for
Was not found.”
Where did language lose it?
Léon-Paul Fargue,
You dirty word-dancer,
Why use caracams
If no one can retrieve?
Was it a Bolivian mosquito
Or a lynx from down Loreto?
Something worn by Brazilian women
Lap-dancing for aging
Tourist men?
You bastard!
The love I searched for was not
Found either.
But you knew that.
Last night, before I fell asleep,
You leaned on my shoulder.
That was either you or an aging caracam,
Searching for her definition,
And not finding it, latched on
To something human.
First published in Plume Anthology of Poetry, 7, 2018.
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BIO
Marilyn Kallet is the author of 18 books, including How Our Bodies Learned, The Love That Moves Me and Packing Light: New and Selected Poems, poetry from Black Widow Press. She has translated Paul Eluard’s Last Love Poems, Péret’s The Big Game, and co-translated Chantal Bizzini’s Disenchanted City. Dr. Kallet is Nancy Moore Goslee Professor of English at the University of Tennessee. For a decade, she has also lead poetry workshops for VCCA-France, in Auvillar. She has performed her poems on campuses and in theaters across the United States as well as in France and Poland, as a guest of the U.S. Embassy’s “America Presents” program.