("Grapes and figs...")

CID CORMAN

CID CORMAN

Five Poems by PHILIPPE JACCOTTET

Grapes and figs

hatched afar by the mountains

under slow clouds

and coolness

what can they do for me now?

A moment comes when the elder lies down

almost powerless. We see

from day to day

him stagger more.

It's no longer a matter of moving

like water through grass:

this doesn't come back.

When even the task master

is drawn so fast so far away,

I look for what can follow:

not the lantern of fruits,

nor the adventurous bird,

nor the purest of images;

rather linen and water changed,

the hand that watches,

rather the heart holding on.

I would like only to remove

what keeps us from the clear,

to leave only space

for kindness disdained.

I listen to old men

who are united by day,

I learn from their feet patience:

they have no worse disciple.

CID CORMAN

"Who will help me? None can come this far.

Who would hold my hands would not hold those trembling,

who would put a screen before my eyes would not

keep me from seeing,

who would be day and night around me like a mantle

could do nothing against this fire, against this cold.

None has buckler against the warriors that beset me,

their torches are already in my streets, all is too late.

Nothing awaits me henceforth but the longest and the worst."

Is this how he grows silent in the narrowing night?

I lifted up my eyes.

Behind the window

amidst the light

images anyhow pass.

Turnips or angels of being,

they repair space.

CID CORMAN

And I now utterly in the celestial cascade,

from top to bottom couched in the hair of the air

here, peer of the most luminous leaves,

hung hardly less high than the buzzard,

watching,

listening

(and the butterflies are like lost flames,

the mountains like smoke)-

an instant, embracing the whole circle of heaven

around me, I believe death caught up in it.

I see almost nothing more than the light,

the cries of distant birds are its knots,

all the mountain of day is illumined,

it no longer hangs over me,

it kindles me.