TWO POEMS FROM THE FRENCH OF LECONTE DE LISLE
May 29, 2011 – 10:03 pm by Andrew Paul Wood
THE ALBATROSS
In the vast span of Capricorn at the pole
The wind bellows, roars, whistles, rattles and howls,
And leaps across the Atlantic’s furious
White slime. It dashes and scrapes
The wan water that it chases and dissipates into mist;
It bites, rips, tears and slices the clouds
Into convulsive fragments where sudden flashes bleed;
It seizes, envelopes and tumbles in the air
A whirling confusion of shrill cries and feathers
That he shakes and that he drags with crests of foam,
Hammering the breasts of the massive sperm whales,
Mingled with their monstrous howling sobs.
Only the king of space and shoreless seas
Flies against the onslaught of wild gusts.
From a powerful and safe way, without haste or delay,
The eye darted across the livid fog
Its wings stretched rigidly like iron
It splits the whirlwind of raucous extended
And quiet amidst the terrible,
Comes, passes and disappears majestically.
THE JAGUAR’S DREAM
Under dark mahogany trees, blossoming vines,
In the heavy air, motionless and saturated with flies
Hang, winding down among the strains,
Lull the parrot splendid and quarrelsome,
The yellow-backed spider monkeys wild.
It is there that the killer of cattle and horses,
Along the old dead tree trunks bark mossy
Claim and tired, returns to equal.
She goes, rubbing her muscular loins;
And the gaping muzzle heavy with thirst,
A breath short and raspy, with a sudden jerk,
Trouble large lizards, hot afternoon fires
Whose flight spark across the tawny grass.
In a low dark wood forbidding the sun
She slumps, lying on a flat rock;
With a broad lick she slicks her leg;
She blinks his golden eyes dazed with sleep;
And, in the illusion of her inert force
By moving her tail and shivering flanks,
She dreams that in the middle of green plantations,
She leaps and sticks nails dripping
In the flesh of bellowing and frightened bulls.
