Paris-based poet, novelist and editor, Stéphane Chaumet casts an apocalyptic eye on the contemporary to produce these poems, crowded with disease, migration, the inhumanity of urban space, time, mystery and death. He discovers the spiritual in the sensuous and a beauty inextricably connected to horror.
Standing on the shoulders of the symbolist and surrealist traditions, this is poetry of savage contrasts, visceral revelations, dark epiphanies. Much of its meaning is found in its powerful sound effects. Chaumet reads each poem aloud in one urgent breath, like a vehicle plunging brakeless down a slope.
To the mitochondrian Eve
the archaeology of slowness
the cult of instantaneity
the dream of abolishing waiting
of sliding over the great limpid arborescent flow toward infinity
our maps of trajectories on computer screens
the abandoning of entire territories for urban moors
around air-conditioned cities pedestrian-free conurbations
the recovery of territories
urban fringes gnawing at coastlines
deserted in favour of floating nomadic cities
where luxury refugees scare themselves
watching pirate populations
the human flood
rivers of hopes panic
flowing over borders directionless scrambling the radar
climatic deportation
the lethal beauty of viruses
mankind snarled in its own technical progress
not knowing how to shed its skin
the mental revolution aborted
the electric discharge of the artificial neuron
the identikit picture of our souls
memories governed by law
and cemeteries changed to garbage dumps
Translated by Hugh Hazelton
along the road of return
tension sharpens your senses
as you search for splits
to get lost in
and see one more moment
of splendour emerge
along the road of return
dead birds are raining
Translated by Madeleine Stratford
A little girl takes a bite out of death
devilishly
mocking death with delight.
Her laugh says Life is vanity
and of the highest worth.
A little girl says
Death must be simpler than life
but come the day I won’t say a word.
A little girl takes a bite out of death
and praises life in a song
more painful than our apocalyptic litanies.
She says Behind the fear of death
hides a fear of life.
A little girl takes a bite out of death
says Your death will but mirror your life.
In death there are no more mirrors.
Translated by Madeleine Stratford
gipsy gestures
sultry steps
serious sacred
games
fearfully fire
intensely earth
joy dances within your dance
a joy blazing in your body’s fire
a joy bursting inside my mouth
juice overflowing the fruit
your legs hips fingers dancing
your wrists neck dancing your pelvis knees ass
dancing your heart dancing your feet and ankles dancing
your shoulders eyelashes blood
your skirt opening up the sky
everything in you
vibrates
from mind to nipples
everything instantly touches penetrates me
and I can’t find the source of the thirst
you bring to my lips and muscles and feverish head
of all that dances within you and is you
your eyes your sweat
your smell your hair your wetness
your smile overflowing my face
giving me the unspeakable transient
certainty that I understand a little better
why we live on this earth
Translated by Madeleine Stratford
For Li Qingzhao
We too drink
clinking eyes
and I suddenly think of her
the pin slipping from her hair in the embrace
the light sweat moistening her dress
the silk stretching around her feet
that fragile voice in the water of time
and warlike rumblings
the ever vulnerable force of spring we await
struggling with the snow
the sobbing of wheels tracing the crack in the road that leads
to exodus to mourning the gaze that jolts along hanging from bitter nostalgia
a flower that loses the sharpness of its red
like the red rubbed off lips in the violence of a kiss
remember
the loss the glory of hours stolen
for the intensity the gift of an instant
of an inebriety on the wine she loved so much
and on much more than the wine
give me your eyes
we’ll dive together as she sings into this glass
this reversal slowing down the patient gulf.
Translated by Hugh Hazelton