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Words in Stone: Pierre Écrite
English, French
160 pages, Hardcover
First published June 1, 1965
71 people want to read
About the author
Yves Bonnefoy
297 books84 followersYves Bonnefoy (1923/6/24-2016/7/1) was a French poet and essayist. Bonnefoy was born in Tours, Indre-et-Loire, the son of a railroad worker and a teacher.
His works have been of great importance in post-war French literature, at the same time poetic and theoretical, examining the meaning of the spoken and written word. He also published a number of translations, most notably Shakespeare and published several works on art and art history, including Miró and Giacometti.
His works have been of great importance in post-war French literature, at the same time poetic and theoretical, examining the meaning of the spoken and written word. He also published a number of translations, most notably Shakespeare and published several works on art and art history, including Miró and Giacometti.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 31, 2018
Sleeper's seas, tree of absence, shoreless hours
—In your eternity a night will end.
How will we name this other day, my soul,
This low-lying glow mixed with black sand?
Lights are muddied in the sleeper's seas.
Words emerge, divide the glowing
Foliage: stars in the surf.
—Almost awake, even a memory.
—In your eternity a night will end.
How will we name this other day, my soul,
This low-lying glow mixed with black sand?
Lights are muddied in the sleeper's seas.
Words emerge, divide the glowing
Foliage: stars in the surf.
—Almost awake, even a memory.
January 26, 2022
This evening it seems to me
That the starlit sky grows larger
And draws near us; that behind so many fires
The night is less dark.
And the foliage burns beneath the foliage; the green
Swells, and the orange of the ripe fruit:
Lamp in the hand of a near-by angel;
A beating of hidden light overtakes the one tree.
This evening it seems to me
That we have entered that garden whose doors
The unreturning angel closed.
* * *
Dream has folded its painted cloths
Into its coffers, along with the shadow
Of that face, stained
With the red clay of the dead.
You did not want
To hold back those narrow hands
That made the sign of solitude
Over the ochre slopes of a body.
Like water
Lost in the red of a darker water,
The head is bowed
Over the beach where death gleams.
* * *
He used to say, You are a water, the darkest
And freshest, and here I taste the one love.
I held his steps back, but among other stones,
In the endless flow of the day below all days.
* * *
What is the place of the dead -
Do they have a right, as we do, to roads -
Do they speak - are their words more real -
Are they the spirit of these leaves, or of a higher foliage?
Did the phoenix build a castle for them -
Did he set their table?
A bird's cry in the fire of a tree -
Is that the space they all crowd in?
Here the dead may lie, in the ivy leaf
- Their ruined word
The harbour, the torn leaf, where the night comes in.
* * *
Fall, but with soft rain, on this face.
Put the poor lamp out slowly
* * *
The darkest face cried
That day is near.
In vain the box-tree tightened
Its grip on the old garden.
Yes, this people has its sorrow,
This absence, its hope.
But the moon is clouded and shadow
Fills the mouth of the dead.
* * *
We were growing old, he the foliage and myself the source;
He the bit of sun and myself the depths;
He who is death and myself the wisdom of living.
I accepted when time showed his face
Like a faun's, laughing without mockery in the shadow;
I loved that the wind rises, carrying the shadow;
And that death did no more than trouble the soundless water
In the dark fountain where the ivy drank.
I loved, I stood upright in the eternal dream.
* * *
Blue and black furrows.
A field that turns aside at the foot of the sky.
The bed, vast and broken like the flooding river.
- Look, it is already evening; and near us
The fire talks in the eternity of the sage leaf.
* * *
Evening.
These birds, indefinite; their voices,
Biting; and the light.
The hand which moved on the bare flank.
We have not moved in a long time.
We speak softly.
And time lies in pools on colour around us.
* * *
Are you gay or sad?
- Did I ever know,
Save that nothing weighs
On the unreturning heart.
Not one bird
Steps on this skylight
- This heart shot through
With gardens and shadow.
Concern for you
Drank my life,
But not one memory
In this foliage.
I am the simple hour
And the untroubled water.
Did I know to love you,
Not knowing enough to die?
* * *
Often I imagine a sacrificial face
Above me, whose rays of light
Are like a tilled field.
The lips and eyes are smiling, and the forehead
Is disconsolate, a heavy flat sound of the sea.
I say: "Be my force;" and his light grows;
At dawn he rises over a land at war
And over a long meandering river which reassures
This land that is now seized and fertilized.
And now I am surprised that all this time
And hardship were needed. For the fruit
Already reigned in the tree. And the sun
Was already shining on the evening land.
I look at the high plains where I can live,
And at this hand that holds another hand of stone,
And at this breath of absence, lifting
The earth in autumn: the unfinished plowing.
* * *
The eyes outside this night were dredged.
The hands, immobilized and warmed.
The fever was reconciled, and the heart told
To be the heart. There was a demon in these veins
Who fled, screaming.
There was a bloody disconsolate voice in the mouth,
It was washed and called forth.
That the starlit sky grows larger
And draws near us; that behind so many fires
The night is less dark.
And the foliage burns beneath the foliage; the green
Swells, and the orange of the ripe fruit:
Lamp in the hand of a near-by angel;
A beating of hidden light overtakes the one tree.
This evening it seems to me
That we have entered that garden whose doors
The unreturning angel closed.
- pg. 3
* * *
Dream has folded its painted cloths
Into its coffers, along with the shadow
Of that face, stained
With the red clay of the dead.
You did not want
To hold back those narrow hands
That made the sign of solitude
Over the ochre slopes of a body.
Like water
Lost in the red of a darker water,
The head is bowed
Over the beach where death gleams.
- pg. 25
* * *
He used to say, You are a water, the darkest
And freshest, and here I taste the one love.
I held his steps back, but among other stones,
In the endless flow of the day below all days.
- A Stone, pg. 35
* * *
What is the place of the dead -
Do they have a right, as we do, to roads -
Do they speak - are their words more real -
Are they the spirit of these leaves, or of a higher foliage?
Did the phoenix build a castle for them -
Did he set their table?
A bird's cry in the fire of a tree -
Is that the space they all crowd in?
Here the dead may lie, in the ivy leaf
- Their ruined word
The harbour, the torn leaf, where the night comes in.
- The Place of the Dead, pg. 43
* * *
Fall, but with soft rain, on this face.
Put the poor lamp out slowly
- A Stone, pg. 53
* * *
The darkest face cried
That day is near.
In vain the box-tree tightened
Its grip on the old garden.
Yes, this people has its sorrow,
This absence, its hope.
But the moon is clouded and shadow
Fills the mouth of the dead.
- pg. 67
* * *
We were growing old, he the foliage and myself the source;
He the bit of sun and myself the depths;
He who is death and myself the wisdom of living.
I accepted when time showed his face
Like a faun's, laughing without mockery in the shadow;
I loved that the wind rises, carrying the shadow;
And that death did no more than trouble the soundless water
In the dark fountain where the ivy drank.
I loved, I stood upright in the eternal dream.
- A Voice, pg. 71
* * *
Blue and black furrows.
A field that turns aside at the foot of the sky.
The bed, vast and broken like the flooding river.
- Look, it is already evening; and near us
The fire talks in the eternity of the sage leaf.
- The Evening, pg. 89
* * *
Evening.
These birds, indefinite; their voices,
Biting; and the light.
The hand which moved on the bare flank.
We have not moved in a long time.
We speak softly.
And time lies in pools on colour around us.
- The Light of Evening, pg. 91
* * *
Are you gay or sad?
- Did I ever know,
Save that nothing weighs
On the unreturning heart.
Not one bird
Steps on this skylight
- This heart shot through
With gardens and shadow.
Concern for you
Drank my life,
But not one memory
In this foliage.
I am the simple hour
And the untroubled water.
Did I know to love you,
Not knowing enough to die?
- The Heart, the Untroubled Water, pg. 105
* * *
Often I imagine a sacrificial face
Above me, whose rays of light
Are like a tilled field.
The lips and eyes are smiling, and the forehead
Is disconsolate, a heavy flat sound of the sea.
I say: "Be my force;" and his light grows;
At dawn he rises over a land at war
And over a long meandering river which reassures
This land that is now seized and fertilized.
And now I am surprised that all this time
And hardship were needed. For the fruit
Already reigned in the tree. And the sun
Was already shining on the evening land.
I look at the high plains where I can live,
And at this hand that holds another hand of stone,
And at this breath of absence, lifting
The earth in autumn: the unfinished plowing.
- pg. 115
* * *
The eyes outside this night were dredged.
The hands, immobilized and warmed.
The fever was reconciled, and the heart told
To be the heart. There was a demon in these veins
Who fled, screaming.
There was a bloody disconsolate voice in the mouth,
It was washed and called forth.
- The Art of Poetry, pg. 131
October 11, 2012
I really need to work on being a better poetry reader -- I enjoyed reading this, but I feel like there was a lot more going on than what my somewhat impatient prose reading mind picked up. This edition, with the original French poems and English translations on facing pages made me wish I had a reading knowledge of French so that I could read Bonnefoy in his original language. Still, the translations seemed smooth and I was able to follow his use of words and images throughout the series of poems. I guess the only way a person gets better at reading poetry is by reading more of it!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews