THE SONG OF THE CASTAWAYS

Born in Montbéliard, 11 November 1952,

Jean-Michel Maulpoix has published poetry,

including A History of blue, the writer imagined,

Public Domain, and not on snow,published

in the Mercure de France. He also published critical studies on Henri Michaux, Jacques Réda and René Char,

as well as testing general poetic

(including poetry nevertheless poetry as lovepoetry and Du). Her writing, which constantly interact prose and poetry,

claiming volontiers a "critical lyricism.

Jean-Michel Maulpoix directs the quarterly journal of literature

and criticism New Series (ed. Field valley Seyssel 01420)

Alumnus of the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud,

modern literature, and author of a doctoral thesis on state

"notion of lyricism, he teaches modern poetry at the University

of Paris X-Nanterre where He also hosts a team of research

entitled "MonitoringoFcontemporary poetry -

------- photo Tony Elieh

"The song of the castaways

Poem extracted from « Dans l'interstice » (« Through the chinks… »

by Jean-Michel MAULPOIX, & Fata Morgana, publ., 1991

Translated by Catherine Wieder

We are the wrecked castaways of language

To and fro do we wander from one country to another, clinging on to the floated woods of our

phrases

Such are the remains of an old vessel crashed so long ago

But desire still plots whilst we ship adrift

And sculpt in those planks statuettes of sirens with blue hair

And go on singing with those very same lungs

Let us repeat the sea

Do not bring any stupid trial to the blue

The sea, clinging on to the sea

Shivers and slides on the sea

Its movements of a skirt,

its blows of the shoulders, its redundancies

And all this blue coming to us on the wide flats of the sea

We like the way the small craft passes and goes

Swaying from one wave to another, dancing its fluttering turmoil to meet the sea again
And its weird jingling sound

When music unfolds itself on the huge score of the sea

The sea mingles with the sea

Mixes its lakes and puddles

Its ideas of gulls and foams

Its dreams of seaweeds and cormorants

With its heavy blue chrysanthemums from the open sea

With clumps of forget-me-nots on the white walls of the islands

With the bruises of the horizon

With switched off light-houses

With the dreams of the unfathomable sky

The sea is a fallen blue sky

Long ago did the sky indeed lose its keys in the sea

Under which suns should we from now on lose ourselves ?

On which shoulder will we rest the fever of our wet head ?

Our dreams are birds' feet on the sand

Fragments of nails cut a few inches away from the sea

We burn on the beach huge heaps of corpses

Since such are the words with their bones and smokes

Heaps of thighbones and metacarpusses

A pyre of sweet-smelling blades of grass and crackling powders

A dry meadow would be kindled next to the sea
High flames headlong jumping among the brooms

And all of a sudden a woman's chest erected in the spluttering

Offered to that mad love

Throwing towards heaven the long moan

Of he who scorched his heart

Alone, does he walk towards her, on the narrow granite jetty

Embarking his perishable body towards nothing

She remains the huge lying shape, running towards him

Throwing towards him her flurries and petticoats

Lo ! here does he stand,

He the small man, standing up straight on the dyke with his pencil

Tightly pressed against her, but apart

Both so close and yet losing sight of each other

Pressing on to each other, their hearts badly anchored

The blue bathes a little that small body of a man

The blue catches him in its nets

A speck of flesh or chip of bashful love

A tuft of light between his palms

Stained with deep ink

Lips tightly closed by the wave

Muted, having nothing to reply to the open blue

Voiceless in the water's maze

Why can't we put out our roots in the sea

As drowned men and weeds do ?

We would easily carry on our shoulders

The never fading blue sky

Which however dreams of colours and hues

And the lukewarm wool of the foams

And the poisonous fruits of the open sea

In which no human lip did ever bite

Thus would we return to the infinite garden

We won't fill the sea with our tears

We'd rather support with our songs the efforts of the storms

Throwing their cries and leaches on to our heads

And when our watery eyes no longer see anything

We'll know better still what the sea is

The scales covering our hearts will have fallen

And our nacreous skin will at last be so white

That we would no longer fear the mad love of the sirens

Cheers to the skies of the open sea

So will we drink from chalices and ciboriums

Gluttunously will we drink the sea

No water will ever quench our thirst

We are thirsty of the salt

Our lips are greedy

In the blue sea, it's always Sunday

When gold fishes kneel

Since the days when the floodtide started carrying us

We started a liking for eternity

Water has gotten into our head

And crystal droplets in our blood

We hardly remember our fellow creatures

Whose gardens fade

And whose children grow

Our heart is so blue.