Poems by Simon Johannin Translated by Cory Stockwell
Ten thousand streets
Secret boulevards
Narrow as a thread where
Racing children
Too tall to get lost
Pass and brush against one another
Through avenues too frail to
Lie down in
Games of bodies who no longer
Know how to hide
Dix mille rues
Des boulevards secrets
Étroits comme un fil où
Se croisent en se frôlant
Par des avenues trop frêles pour que
L’on s’y allonge
Les jeux de courses des enfants
Trop grands pour se perdre
Les jeux des corps qui ne savent
Plus se cacher
You breathe life onto my skin
Life everywhere
Life all the way up to your hair come undone
The exhausted life of your eyes
That cannot close themselves to pleasure
The fire of the cries you launch toward me
Through the coming storm
A sleep
Dazed by your lightning
Making my head switch off and on
Tu souffles la vie sur ma peau
La vie partout
La vie jusque dans tes cheveux défaits
La vie fatiguée de tes yeux
Qui ne peuvent se fermer au plaisir
Le feu des cris que tu me lances
À travers l’orage qui s’amène
Un sommeil
Abruti par ta foudre
Faisant s’éteindre et s’allumer ma tête
The ceiling’s episodes
Parade
Night after night
The ancestors escape
From the skull of that bird
Grasping air through its mouth
I swallow the palaces
The tapestries of hope
Where for every day
I counted so much Moon
Les épisodes du plafond
Défilent
Nuit après nuit
S’évadent les ancêtres
Du crâne de cet oiseau
Tenant l’air par sa bouche
J’avale les palais
Les tapisseries d’espoir
Où pour chaque jour
J’ai tant compté de Lune
Born in 1993, Simon Johannin grew up on a farm in the Hérault department of southern France, where his parents kept bees. He left home at the age of 17 to study cinema at the University of Montpellier, but soon dropped out. He then worked as a temp and as a toy salesman before moving to Brussels to study in the Urban Space department at the La Cambre art school from 2013 to 2016. He published his first novel, L’Été des charognes, in 2017. La Dernière saison du monde (2022), from which the poems published here are taken, is his fourth book. Instagram: @simonjohannin
Cory Stockwell is a Minneapolis-based writer and translator, and a lecturer in the Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Minnesota. His writing has appeared in The Common, Spartan, The Oxford Literary Review, and many other publications. Translations include books by Jean-Luc Nancy and Cynthia Fleury, and poems by Jean-Christophe Bailly and Juan de Dios García. Twitter: @cory_stockwell
These poems are taken from the collection La Dernière saison du monde, © Éditions Allia, Paris, 2022.
17 January 2023
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