D’un sourire
On prend le temps de respirer toute la dormeuse
mais sur une passante on se retourne déchiré
d’un seul coup par ce sourire imprévisible
surgi d’enfance en souvenir d’on ne sait quoi
un sourire venu à fleur et resté comme une ombre
offerte et retirée à tous les promeneurs
depuis que tu marches et te souviens tu cherches
l’ange oublié l’ange apparu de bouche en bouche
le chiffre des visages aimés dont la caresse
à la musique douloureuse est brusquement parue
et repartie s’enfouir à jamais dans l’allure
ayant cité ce mystérieux sourire d’autrefois
Translations of this Poem
On a Smile
Translator: David Kinloch
Slowly, you breathe in everything about sleeping beauty
but a passerby makes you turn round torn
suddenly by this unexpected smile
surging from their childhood in memory of who knows what
a smile softly grazing the skin shifting like shadow
offered to and then withdrawn from everyone walking by
ever since you could walk and remember you’re seeking
the forgotten angel the angel announced by this mouth and that
the sum of loved faces whose sad musical caress has brusquely
come and gone to bury itself forever in the hectic pace of things
after briefly quoting this mysterious smile from once upon a time
About this poem
The Scottish Poetry Library in partnership with the Institut français d’Ecosse invited Jacques Rancourt, director of the annual Festival franco-anglais de poésie and editor of La Traductière, to choose about twenty poems from the last twenty years to be circulated to four Scottish poets, who would then choose twelve poems to translate.
M. Rancourt and Magi Gibson, David Kinloch, Brian McCabe and Donny O’Rourke gathered in the Scottish Poetry Library on 15 December 2002 for a concentrated day of translation, re-working and working on the poems they’d chosen, with advice from M. Rancourt and in discussion with each other. This collegial approach was different from the usual practice of showing work to one or two friends in its intensity of focus and level of exchange.
