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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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