Tuesday, March 23, 2010

River of my Eyes / Rivière de mes Yeux -- Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau

 
River of my Eyes

O my eyes this morning wide as rivers
O waves of my eyes ready to reflect all
And this freshness under my eyelids
Amazing
Everywhere around images I see

Like a brook refreshing the isle
And like the flowing wave
Surrounding the sun bather.


Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
translated by George J. Dance

from Looking and Playing in Space, 2011

Creative Commons License
River of My Eyes by George J. Dance [translation of "Riviere de mes yeux" by Hector de Saint-Denys Garnewu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

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Rivière de mes yeux

Ô mes yeux ce matin grands comme des rivières
Ô l'onde de mes yeux prêts à tout refléter
Et cette fraîcheur sous mes paupières
Extraordinaire
Tout alentour des images que je vois

Comme un ruisseau rafraîchit l'île
Et comme l'onde fluente entoure
La baigneuse ensoleillée


Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
de
Regards et jeux dans l'éspace, 1937

[All rights reserved by the author's estate - Please do not copy]


Read more by Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau here:
http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html

Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau biography

2 comments:

  1. Such refreshing poesie. I have not read its like since Baudelaire or Apollinaire (made sure to read the original version first). This reminds me of bygone days spent sun-worshiping full-lotus beneath the verdant fronds of beach-apple trees.

    Sensational!

    :D

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  2. Cool. You liked Garneau, too. He is cool. He's sort of famous in Quebec, as the first writer there to use vers libre; but another guy like
    Scott that most of the world has never got to read. He does remind me of Baudelaire, now that you mention it; and he wouldn't if you hadn't mentioned it, because it's not any formal or stylistic similarity. It's more what the mentality that you call "anti-poetry" -- they both read as if they just wrote about whatever they wanted, the way they wanted, without worrying about the "poetical" way to do that.

    I'm posting another Garneau today: his most 'famous' poem, "Bird Cage".

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