I ROW

A poem by Henri Michaud (my translation from the original French).

___

I ROW

I damned your forehead your belly your life
I damned the streets that your walk took
The things your hand took
I damned the inside of your dreams

I put a pond in your eye—it doesn’t see anymore
An insect in your ear—it doesn’t hear anymore
A sponge in your brain—it doesn’t understand anymore

I cooled you down in the soul of your body
I froze you in your deeper life
The air you breathe suffocates you
The air you breathe seems to come from a basement
Is air already breathed out
That was rejected by hyenas
The injure of this air nobody will breathe it

Your skin is all sweat
Your skin sweats the water of great fear
Your armpits let out a strong smell of crypt

Animals stop on your way
At night, dogs howl, their head turned up towards your house
You cannot flee
You won’t have as much as the strength of an ant at the tip of the foot
Your tiredness is a stump of lead in your body
Your tiredness stretches till the country of Nan
Your tiredness is unspeakable

Your mouth bites you
Your nails claw you
No longer yours is your wife
No longer yours is your brother
The sole of his foot is bitten by a furious snake

They drooled on your progeny
They drooled on the laughter of your little girl
They came drooling before your front house

The world moves away from you

I row
I row
I row against your life
I row
I multiply myself into countless rowers
To row more strongly against you

You fall in the vague
You are without breath
You tire even before the slightest effort

I row
I row
I row

You go drunk, tied to the tail of a mule
Drunkenness as an enormous umbrella that darkens the sky
And gathers the flies
Breathtaking drunkenness of the semi-circular canals
Badly understood beginning of hemiplegia
Drunkenness no longer leaves you
Makes you lean to the left
Makes you lean to the right
Puts you down on the rocky road
I row
I row
I row against your days

In the house of sufferings your enter

I row
I row
On a black headband your actions are written down
On the big white eye of a one-eyed horse rolls your future

I ROW

(1967)

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[Picture: The president's horse by reading_is_dangerous]