Translated from the French by Patrick Williamson

While Dreaming While Writing

While dreaming while writing

The river goes on and on descending
almost motionless and we are forever

asking ourselves about the meaning of
this drift whereas we see the movement

impedes the journey. Do we know any
more than a fragment of night? We walk

against the flow of time to check
whether the past is not led astray, we
trace smoke

signals in the air to forsake our illusions
to entrust us to the river, to spell the
names

of trees which mark out our future. The
light passes right through us even in
agony

it knows apotheosis, have compassion
for those who revive its presence they’ll
burn

between stones and the sand.

We add tenderness to sail by dead
reckoning. The sky is vast, and drives us
forward. Weapons buried, fleeces
ripped off the flock, we abandon
ourselves to incoherence by weaving in
the air words which delight us and, in
our elation, we squander this friable
slice of words between existence and
death where sand and waters cover up
our footsteps. The gods welcome us
when we dawdle on remote roads, and
watch over what is no longer. We think
we recognise them in spite of
everything, the light reminding us of
earlier worlds we freed ourselves from,
our silence, enclosed in the pit of a
world where birth and death no longer
have their place.

[…]

Beyond the horizon, there is again the
horizon, this unceasing line this
inaccessible point which

allows us to reach the end of the journey
beyond perhaps. We can only speak of what

lasts. The words brush over grass flattened
against earth, waters seeking a river after

that we no longer suspect anything;
shadows, darkness, spindrift, we reroute

the winds in our walks of sand, our life of
salt, to take root in a time that passes

through openwork. What can we offer this
earth in exchange for an inconsequential
death? The weight of

things, stone, rain, the river forgetful of its
banks. Each season gathers a small part of

our life riddled by air and frost and, turning
our back on our shadow,

we risk disappearing like imprudent people
treading on ice that caves in.

Let us set off again to alter our journey,
to rapidly do it justice, to swear
allegiance to those gathered too soon,
who, out of gratitude, postpone their
flight. Our eyes close to images which
fade all too soon. Our steps disturb the
insects, the stones and the leaves. We
have to dig deep into the wood to
discover the peace of the forest. We
know time wears itself out trying to
write its name. The water at the river’s
edge does not change. The words, the
silence balance out the day.

We measure what separates us from a
barely-inhabited country. These
reference points,

that muddled space reminds us of sleepy
fires in the night. We ready to follow

a path that seesaws between emptiness
and forest. We seek a sovereign to give

memory asylum, and shelter our voices
from spring tides. Then light arrives, a
thin

grey wall of mist, as if the air itself had
risen out of damp, and hung before us,
solid as

a cliff, that constant roar that is the
bottom line, a thrust and slump

echoing under our feet.

We conceal ourselves below the shadow
enclosed in a country of indefinite colors.
We gather water from the coming rains in
our hands. Let’s keep on our guard. Rain in
this season heralds the coming floods,
bridges swept away, dreams broken
outright. Let’s make it a point of honor not
to exclude the night further than the light
demands. The coming dawn has this price.
You haven’t been here before, but it’s
where you’re meant to be.

[…]

Translator’s note-

I first met Alhau back in the early 1990s, as we are both members of French translation journal La Traductière’s editorial committee. We have worked together on translations of his work over the years, some of which published in La Traductière and in an artists’ book for Editions Transignum. In the late 1990s, he asked me to translate En révant en écrivant (While dreaming, while writing) in order to send it to a publisher in India. The project did not come to fruition. The English poems published here are part of a larger transcreation project comprising 12 sections.
It is based on this translation of En révant en écrivant, plus a later unfinished translation of Sommeil du feu. The section “We add tenderness to sail by dead” and some of this commentary was recently published in  Transference: Vol. 8: Iss. 1, Article 15. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/transference/vol8/iss1/15