IN ONE'S HEART OF HEARTS
(Le For intérieur)
COLETTE NYS-MAZURE
An Urban Room
It is a room in the city, perched up high, as bare as you are, a room in the attic. The roof opens its single eye over the ink of night, the straggling clouds or the glistening tiles.
From the secluded room surge the cry or the hush of amber motions. Guarded by the rain's halberds. Sometimes by arabesques of frost or the musty dust of summer.
Deep in the only mirror, a smear of brownish sun. The scent of love reaches the blossoms on the antique tapestry and holds space captive in its unruly snare. Whose fingers linger over the naked skin? Whose hand reaches out to an impassioned face?
Other rooms. Temporary retreats. Breathing suspended, bodies exhausted. You, in your utmost self, with every resistance released. Silky palavers, lips against lips.
If one or the over gets up sometimes, it is to listen to the city: what time can it be? Is life going on without us? Through its inhuman streets so many falter, exiled from love.
(Translatede by Renee Linkhorn)
Seascapes
A hollow of sand with an edging of whispering sea reeds. The sea froths in the breach of the dunes. Bodies fall in love, out of love, again and again with the ebb and flow of the tides. Circular and sonorous, caresses roll among the shrills.
A storm is brewing. Beneath the flail, soaked steel clouds flee the horizon-seagulls and sails in hasty retreat-.Young rabbits bolt at the first flash.Clumps of seaweed flay the beach bristled by the wind.
Wild-eyed, panic-sticken lovers, moored more tightly together by the tempo.Impassioned bursts.Frontiers jostle each other, merge, submerge.So fused that the oceanic wrath has no hold on them.
Will our doubles return to saunter through the pebbles and weathered rocks, polished by excess? Into wat state of uncertainty will the expunging of the sand throw them?
(Translatede by Anne-Marie Glasheen)
In the old mill
It is a room in the hills. By the heart's compass, all pathways lead to the old mill, hidden deep in a thousand ramblings of tall grasses. Well-known markers: the familiar call of a blackbird, the reassuring murmur of the stream. The water coos from stone to stone and loiters under the slippery shale, the worm-eaten footbridge, the low-lying branches.
Between the beams nothing disturbs the spinners, their webs aglow with crisscrossing sun rays. Jute sacks surrender their last few grains. A smell of old straw assails the lovers' throats.
In the naked light of day, one body is linked to the other; the walls come ablaze and their hands marvel. Balm and pleasure soothe the burning wounds. After floury slumbers, gladly will they break bread at dawn.
(translated by Renée Linkhorn)
From the Kingdom
October light. An acrid smell of burning leaves wafts from a fire lit nearby. In the clear stillness, gnats dart to and fro and end up pinned to a cobweb stretching between wisteria shoots.
Undisturbed, blackbirds fly as they please among the tall yellow daisies, the orange nasturtiums and the last of the roses. Spots of rust here and there taint the peaceful scene. The sun tries to be spring-like, but a chestnut just bounced off the brick wall.
Beyond the trees, in shifting patterns, patches of light dance on the grass. A horse trots away, briefly caught in a sunbeam. Left to its own fancy, the universe thrives in silence.
(Translated by Renée Linkhorn)
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