Le quartier des fleuves
Moi aussi j’aurais pu grandir ici,
dans ces rues plates et calmes
et sans mystère mais peut-être n’est-ce
que parce qu’elles sont plus larges que chez nous.
Au centre les photos montraient un terrain vague;
les arbres ont aujourd’hui soixante-cinq ans
et font beaucoup d’ombre. Sous eux
on peut s’installer et lire
un livre quelconque, dans la chaleur stagnante.
Plus tard se lever, parce qu’à la fin
on finit par se sentir de trop, voyeur.
Citoyen ordinaire sur une rue moyenne,
on passe devant l’école, le salon de thé,
on réintègre la circulation. Aux terrasses des cafés
les gens sont disposés à causer, à rire. Je sais
pourquoi je suis venu ici. Je n’ai pas besoin de le dire.
Translations of this Poem
The river district
Translator: Brian McCabe
I too could have grown up here
in these flat serene streets
without mystery but isn’t it just
because they are broader than where we live
At the centre the photos showed a vague landscape
the trees are sixty-five years old today
and cast heavy shadows. Under them
you can settle down to read
a humdrum book in the stagnant heat.
Later get up, because in the end
you end up feeling like a voyeur.
Ordinary citizen in an average street.
You pass in front of the school, the tea room
and get back into circulation. On the cafe terraces
people are happy to chat, laugh.
I know why I came here. I don’t need to explain.
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.
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Anne Talvaz
Anne Talvaz was born in Brussels, and now lives near Paris. A travel-writer as well as poet, she has translated works by many English- and Spanish-language poets, including John Ashbery. Her own recent collections include Panaches de mer, lithophytes...
