@lyonesseofalbion / lyonesseofalbion.tumblr.com
"...that cry which had sounded over the Seine behind me years before had never ceased, carried by the river to the waters of the Channel, to travel throughout the world, across the limitless expanse of the ocean, and that it had waited for me there until the day I had encountered it. I realized likewise that it would continue to await me on seas and rivers, everywhere, in short where lies the bitter water of my baptism. Here, too, by the way, aren’t we on the water? On this flat, monotonous, interminable water whose limits are indistinguishable from those of the land? Is it credible that we shall ever reach Amsterdam? We shall never get out of this immense holy-water fount. Listen. Don’t you hear the cries of invisible gulls? If they are crying in our direction, to what are they calling us?"
The Fall by Albert Camus
(On the picture: Francine Camus on the balcony of the family apartment in Oran)
Halina Poświatowska:
(you ask — what camels haul in their saddle-bags...)
you ask — what camels haul in their saddle-bags
they carry my heart
across the desert
since you left me
I remain alone
under the yellow sun
the earth is scorched
and human hearts are hollow
the source of tenderness
beats not for me
sometimes I see you
but with my outstretched arms
touch only
my thought about you
you ask — what camels haul in their saddle-bags
they carry my heart
across the desert
[ Indeed I Love - Właśnie Kocham (Bilingual English-Polish edition) by Halina Poświatowska ]
https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/pl/Po%C5%9Bwiatowska%2C_Halina-1935/%2A%2A%2A%28pytasz_-_co_d%C5%BAwigaj%C4%85_w_jukach...%29
Halina Poświatowska: (on a dust-covered road...)
on a dust-covered road I search for your lips.
I bend over and look under each moss-wrapped stone.
coiled into spirals snails sleep in moist shade.
I wake them and ask where is he? they stretch out their drowsy
horns peek from their shells squint at the sun.
and vanish saying nothing. I ask the stone smooth
its rough surface with my warm hungry hand. it's silent.
I ask the sun. it bends its head to the west and I go after the sun westward to find you.
[ Indeed I Love - Właśnie Kocham (Bilingual English-Polish edition) by Halina Poświatowska ]
https://www.babelmatrix.org/works/pl/Po%C5%9Bwiatowska%2C_Halina-1935/_%2A%2A%2A%28Na_zakurzonej_drodze_szukam_twoich_ust...%29/hu/68576-%2A%2A%2A_%28egy_porlepte_%C3%BAton_kutatom_az_ajkad...%29
"And so little do the roads know of her that I’ve come to accept, with flowing tears, that she’s gone to sleep the fabled sleep, a sea without treachery and a peak without slope, no happiness or pain, no more forgetting."
[Y tanto se la ignoran los caminos que suelo comprender, con largo llanto, que ya duerme del sueño fabuloso, mar sin traición y monte sin repecho, ni dicha ni dolor, no más olvido.]
She Who Walks [La Que Camina] by Gabriela Mistral
"After that painful night, he only feels resigned. What was done doesn’t provoke any conflict in him. It immerses him in an intense calm that he never knew before, distances him and pacifies him. A dignified sadness, without severity, he no longer feels anything but the sweetness of things, he reaps only memory’s charms."
Pretty Things by Virginie Despentes
"I sometimes think now that I’m recovering myself, the way I used to be. I’m all too glad to think about the time when I had everything, when my cheerfulness was truly full of cheer, when I was serious in the good sense of the word. (quasi glissando) Then everything became worse for the wear, damaged, used and used up and ultimately destroyed."
Malina by Ingeborg Bachmann
"I'd drink into myself your melting flesh
As thick and sweet as tropic juices, and
The thrilling magic of the smell of you
Like sage and horsetail of primeval Earth.
And your ethereal soul too I would take
(It flickers lantern-like above your head),
All of you greedily, insatiably"