Place
Hors-série 2 - septembre 2019 /

Special issue 2 - September 2019

Jan Baetens

MY LIFE TO LIVE

XIII.

 

A MAN SPEAKS WITH NANA

NANA LOVES.

 

 

 

The man says to her :

 

Guard your wings just a little:

I would like to keep inserted

 

My fingers manly and fluttering.

Give me just long enough

 

To count all the colors of the wings,

And I also would like to stop

 

In hope of luring

Your impure looking.

 

 

He continues to speak to her :

 

Genuflection inclines

The heart’s lengthy embraces

 

Here and there where night

Attempts to quarrel with her ennui,

 

Alone the couple

With the single angel

 

Survey the singular solitude

Of the prayer

 

 

The man continues :

 

Lovely colors and nimble

And your voice for us is signal,

 

False choice of flowers to harvest

Parrots that twist

 

Blood and joy and jumps that inject

In your eyes ancient analects

 

Where to you I lie

Unimaginably.

 

 

And again :

 

The universe which you ignore

By design like décor

 

From your dazzled gesture

Allegory changed,

 

Dawn and illumination

Just like that, through scansion

 

Make you, liliaceous,

Like some museum pieces.

 

 

He is touched :

 

Old age came to you,

Winds, flames, clouds

 

In your way, the ferocious

Beast, the children headless

 

The snake when it inhales

Its prey in vain which exhales

 

In your memory, falls silently

Gently, digressively

 

 

You remind me, he said, of the angels of Thierry Bouts :

 

One to die, mine, among others

(And that of so many, many others)

 

Blood, accent, once again

(This death, the last bastion)

 

Foolish Muse who entreats

(Bitterness is never beat)

 

Death, she says, a death

(But not yours yet)

 

 

His feet return to the earth

 

Toward your eyes forever

Looks turn around. Never

 

The less I meet blank whites again,

If unbearably

 

Void of a master’s work

(Difficult period to know

 

Nevertheless—unless to depend on it

They have to give an explanation)

 

 

He smiles.

He rises.

 

 

Nana is lonely.

She sings me a hit.

 

But when we love love

We are not afraid to speak about it

 

The voice that we hear evermore

And the summer hits

 

Confusion is made by

Moving through clichés, summer hits

 

From anechoic rooms silently spring

Subtitles, lyrics

 

Of the heavy heart, the heart light

The language seems donated

 

Finally, finally, finally for

The first time speaking

 

Is easy when it is love

One is speaking of under the spell

 

Of charm and the charm that runs

Does not have the time to be forgotten

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