Translated Poems
TRANSLATED POEMS keyed to the biography, Max Jacob: A Life in Art and Letters, W. W. Norton, 2020.
Translated by Rosanna Warren.
Chapter 3:
Rough draft in the Doucet manuscript.
I’ve lost the apple trees which…
I’ve lost my apple trees and I’ve lost my faith.
I’ve lost the wheelbarrow, tipped over by the furrow
The mud-spattered barrow with its axle cracked.
I’ve lost the gray sky of my Basse Bretagne
I’ve lost my friends the peasants who hang about
The young bourgeois, just now released from school,
Who came and touched their shoulders with his hand
Saying, “How I love you, my simple countrymen!”
I’ve lost my country, which is my only love,
I’ve lost the peace of the land that suckled my youth.
What have you given, Paris, to my bewildered soul
In exchange for the woods you’ve stolen from me?
Despair, poverty, envy’s shuddering rage,
Hypocrisy from men, women’s harsh contempt…
Enough! I’ve suffered too much, return me to my land…
I don’t belong to art, no, I’m a peasant!
And Paris has made a pimp of my honest heart.
Give me back my homeland, that old opera tune,
Or let me die!
(Garnier I, 210)
Chapter 7:
Love Song
I who have roamed the world by sea,
I who have read books and am tired of songs,
I’m not tired of looking at your eyes.
I who have known China and heard wise men speak,
I’m not tired of listening to your voice.
To me who has lost his health as a sailor and a seminary student,
To me you give back blood and strength.
“Chanson d’amour,” La Côte, 106
Chapter 11:
The Demoniac’s Mass
Placare…,christe…servulis….serviculis…beatam me dicent orifice astral
He’s really too cute to be a canker.
He’s really too ugly to be a cantor.
(I won’t allow you to write such a thing
You’ll go to Hell for daring such a thing)
Misericordia animi anima anima mea
Ma mama mea maria la grosse ma…Maria…Oh! Give me a break…
There’s someone bawling over the chatter.
There’s someone splashing dishes with vomit splatter.
There’s someone of the ones with a grainy voice.
If you think I don’t see you laughing at me, think again, you choir boys!
Resurrexit homini hominum Pelléas nostrum
And in the painting in back, the guys are sinister scum.
They’ve lit Catherine wheels for the Black Mass.
The angels in the painting in back have no place to sit, alas.
It’s night, tick tock, too crass, plutocracy.
Our Lord swells, deflates: he wants to go out.
The last statue of Mary—the one to the left,
Connects, disconnects—oh pardon me, pardon, is it a dream?
She dons a snout…like the others,
Like all the others, in fact,
For there are no humans here.
Intumescitur anima mea, longitudinal,
Neither in the full scale of the voices, the voice in the choir stalls,
Nor in my own voice in malaise, in malady, malalaïa,
And all this for having brought a wolf or hyena into the works.
—Oh! I saw it perfectly well!—
But God terribly takes revenge,
We eat God deliciously to make amends,
And the sacrilegious go to Hell.
What to do? That is
What’s the meaning of soul, of the Mass, of the female ass
Except…inept…ept…
“La Messe du démoniaque,” La Défense de Tartufe, Oeuvres 510.
Poetry 2014
Périgal-Nohor
My azure sky surged in its market share
For my epithalamion two lions bowed
And Saint Catherine brandished aloft her blade
To trim my hedges of their honey-colored hair—
Two castles thickly pinnacled with cones—
Crawfish crawled around the turret stones.
Nothing else remained in this capital
And scraps of gardens scattered here and there
And we saw, too, your dainty coiffes of lace
Madame Adamensaur
Pickled-herring-color
Madame Mirabeau, Madame Mirabelle
Nebuchadinosaur, the Queen-Mama, said she.
Back toward the cathedral sailboats raced
One laden with treasure, the other with coal tar
The third caught fire, carrying Abelard
There was something vegetal about the sea
In block letters laboriously I trace
I’ll always be a schoolboy in this art
Scholar foolscap collar we wear a crown that glows
The one who receives is worth him who bestows.
“Périgal-Nohor,” Nord-Sud v. 4-5, June-July 1917, 19. Le Laboratoire central, Oeuvres 590.
Poetry 2014
Chapter 12:
Romantic Allusions to Mardi-Gras
No, Monsieur Gambetta, Bolivar's taken his leave
We saw his top hat and his meteorite
Under the jet of the gas lamp's flare
Pierrot companion and cascade.
His smock at the end of the quay betrayed
I'm dining at home tonight.
The Seine has seen kings roll to the guillotine.
Night's horrors spy you from gothic dead-end streets.
O bicycle, your saddle is a velvet mask.
Love's opera boxes shivered in the Eastern breeze.
If we must die, Madame, hear me. Farewell!
Hemlines and hearts plummeted to the ground
And one curled one’s little finger to drink in style.
My life is a tango, my heart a grand-guignol.
Fate! a halo of fear hovers over Notre-Dame!
It's a whip, you fool, what you took for a fencing foil
Forgive him, Gerald, in the name of our love, forgive
I want no more kisses from you
Ah! when will you escape the penitentiary of love.
Women offered themselves like bitches in heat.
At times, after midnight, the Seine resembles Hell.
Come! Monsieur Beelzebub, I challenge you hard.
I'll crack you like a soft boiled egg. En garde!
One or the other of us must leave this earth,
he said! And there spread the immense, blank ennui of a moonless
night.
“Allusions romantiques au Mardi-Gras,” Action, vol. 1, n. 2, March 1920. Le Laboratoire central, Œuvres 595.
Free Inquiry 2019
Nocturne
Welcome, Goddess, to our barn
Behold the glorious ears of corn
You will not wake with quiet step
The tired laborers as they sleep.
Flowers murmur to the soil
For the dead the moon replies
Letting its silver light reveal
Four houses, a pair of trees.
I hear crooning toward the skies
A dream becoming melody
A woman, naked--oh! surprise!--
In the barn as on a balcony.
Serpents, slumbering, my initials twined
The concert of forest animals fell dumb
Each blade of grass thrust a shaft of madness up
And to their own beauty the distant trees were blind.
“Nocturne,” Le Coq parisien, n. 3, July-August 1920, n.p. Le Laboratoire central, Oeuvres 564.
Battersea Review 2015
Chapter 13:
Voyages
(fragments)
Saint-Benoît-of-the-Ancient-Vine
Polinge in the land of Orléans
your calm fields and Loire benign
will erase Paris from my mind.
....
Prepare yourself by prayer to care
for the simplest bird or plant,
to find the primrose just as fair
as brightest enamel adamant.
Angel hands, invisible arms,
with a gentler putty, come compose
another balance, other charms
for my heart made hard by blows.
Light, without obstacle, enter me
force apart the doors of the tomb
joining me to the elementary
water drop, the grain of sand.
Flat, the flat earth reflects the whole sky,
the rivers are scars streaked on the dying God,
the wheat is his Hair, fountains the Honey flow
that pours from his Heart, from his Body, in flood.
I have the photograph of the world in my head,
I want nothing but this picture of God you are to me,
I want only, God, as men, those men you made.
I wait for evening's peace in your fertile plains,
land of Orléans! Sickle left lying in the fields
the Loire, eternal emblem of Adam's chore.
Oh distances of distance! islands dappled in gray-blue,
church spires dappled! sleeping villages,
distance of trees distant on a tremulous spreading sea
of wheat, silken hope blessed by the Lord.
...
I love well-tended children, sensible young girls,
I love the piety of mothers, fathers hard at work,
gaiety without shouting, a little wine at meals,
the young in the choir singing, Sunday at church.
“Voyages,” Action March-April 1922. Les Pénitents en maillots roses, Oeuvres 674.
Boredom at Europa’s Bull
So many Spanish coins, the widows’ tummy purse!
So many dressers sporting doublets and plumes!
You ask why I don’t read Sainte-Beuve and converse?
I come from Pernambouc where kings visit my rooms
Ah! Why is polenta considered cuisine?
And why did Bellovèse take to founding Milan?
No! No! I abhor the weight of a golden crown
Theseus call your horse of Tamerlane.
Is there a corner of solitude
I’ll go seek it out by horse
in the monastery too many men crowd
too many women in the market place
in my attic room, too many books
too many clothes hanging from the hooks
too many papers in the cabinet
too much meat in the kitchenette!
Ah! I give up! Listen! Excuse my foolishness!
Narcissus clutched his head, gazing at his glass
Oh! Plagues! Oh land of the Rose and its attar
I’d go see you tomorrow if you weren’t so far.
Lord Bolingbroke is travelling
and loses his slipper, his satin slipper fine
Page, go see! My page so kind
it’s in the wood among the pines!
it’s in the wood among the pines.
Fear not, a fairy said to him,
I’ll give you two others of golden ore
--No! Those were the slippers I adore
Thank you! Madame Belphégor.
And the echo repeated across the plain
the echo of the echoing wail of the horn
and the echo repeated across the plain
Thank you! Madame Belphégor
Thank you! Madame Belphégor.
“Ennui sur le Taureau d’Europe,” Action, v. 2, n. 9, October 1921, 18. Corrected version in Les Pénitents en maillots roses, Oeuvres 679. (“Plagues” corrected to “Persia”).
Battersea Review 2015
Mysterious Garden
Wings like shells! leaves dead and dry
russet insect lips, will you open wide,
it wasn't leaves at the doorstep side,
it was insects brown as mahogany
will they speak? will they rise from the ground
up the brick wall will they climb?
It's rained! at the parsonage, it rained,
I'm here! I hear the horsemen come.
I'm here! I hear the croaking frogs,
I'm here! I hear toads whistling
under pumpkin leaves, something creeps and lags.
I'm here! I hear water fall, ping ping.
The dwarf palm tree guards with its spears
two pear trees from the too-bright day.
Who laughed as evening light held sway?
Someone sang. It must be the carpenters.
Oh life! Oh death! Oh mysterious earth
what do you hide that dusk shows forth?
What treasure do you keep under lock and key?
Oh life! Oh death! Where is your treasury?
Someone sang! At the organ bent
girls, cantors of Gregorian chant,
amidst barley fields, mingle their souls
to the Christian poem as evening falls.
One works the pedal, the other holds the score.
I'm here! I hear plants speaking to me.
I wait for a look from a dying flower.
Petal! I wait for an eye upon your pearl
the shadow will never darken more.
“Jardin mystérieux,” Les Écrits nouveaux, v. 4, April 1922, 3. Les Pénitents en maillots roses, Oeuvres 698. (Set to music by Henri Sauguet in his Les Pénitents en maillots roses, 1944)
Battersea Review 2015
Love and Time
When a white arm slips off its glove
You recall an absent love
When like a breeze in a field of wheat
A skirt rustling near your feet
Brushes against your dancing shoe
Something lightly troubles you.
When someone sings to the harpsichord
Every note and every chord
Speak of her, only of her.
Autumn and the dying leaves that stir
The train car carrying you away
Recall a kiss you shared one day
In Algiers on holiday!
Look at yourself in the mirror well!
All that's left of what was dawn
Is evening and the vesper bell.
What has Time, to love unknown,
Done to Eleonore
While leaving you sick and sore?
....
(stanzas deleted from the version in Les Pénitents en maillots roses)
Fine love, oh Mediterranean Sea
I've kept from all your gentleness
And from your sweet old-fashioned dress
Nothing but a mocking memory.
Pompom of broccoli green, rose-red,
Venus was born in your bed
Under an apple-green baldaquin!
In Ocean, she'd have been a man.
“L’Amour et le temps,” La Revue européenne, vol. 6, n. 2, July-August 1923, 20. Les Pénitents en maillots roses, Oeuvres 705.
Chapter 17:
The Little Servant
Preserve us from fire and thunder,
the thunder runs like a bird,
if it’s the Lord who brings it
blessed be the damage.
If it’s the devil who brings it
get it the hell out of here.
Preserve us from scabs and pimples,
from plague and leprosy.
If it’s for a penance you send them,
Lord, I accept them, thank you.
If it’s the devil who brings them
get them the hell out of here.
Goiter, goiter, leave your sack,
leave my head and my neck!
Saint Elmo’s fire, Saint-Guy’s dance,
if it’s the devil who brings you
my God deliver me.
Help me to grow up fast
and give me a good husband
who’s not too much of a drunk
and doesn’t beat me every night.
"La Petite servante," Poèmes de Morven le Gaëlique, Oeuvres 1628.
Chapter 18:
Ballad of the Night Visit
(fragments)
What a winter, in 1929! Paris was made of white velvet, its windows of moonstone.
That night, that December night, I woke in my cozy room, at the Hôtel Nollet. I woke with the haggard logic of madness, of madness. In the cozy room, warmly, I dressed in thick woolens, since it was freezing, (it was 2 a.m.) dressed with good shaggy gloves and the haggard logic of madness.
'In this cold, on such a night, in this snow, where are you going at such an hour?' asked the night watchman, 'At this hour you won't find a taxi.' 'Night watchman, I'm going to the Cirque du Temple!' What a winter in 1929. Paris was made of white velvet, its windows of moonstone and each street: shadow and light.
'Frozen taxi driver, take me, hurry, I beg you, Boulevard du Temple, number 108.' It was the only taxi, the only one, running in Paris at such an hour and in the unsoiled snow, in this unsoiled hour. Ah, how it had snowed! So my fiery eyes, my eyes of mystic apparition contemplated the window, the window where you sleep bound to your parents, where you sleep, I sitting on a bench in the snow and your window, your window in moonstone.
...
The taxi rowed, rolled, restored, almost fainting with joy, with cold, with love, a man weeping, weeping with joy, with love, with cold, with love, a weeping man.
...
After my love died, oh! long months after, the sorrow and joy of having loved (did I still love you?) after the obscure charnel house of bloody separations, and her dead and you in me and I in you, and her dead and I dead, I here and you over there, I spoke to you, angelic one, I spoke to you of this visit in the snow at the door of your house in this Paris of white velvet, of moonstone, shadow and light in each street...
“Ballade de la visite nocturne,” Point, April 1938. Ballades, Oeuvres 1461
Stella Maris, As They Say
The ocean colors my days: in love: my days!
But look, the ocean fades. Ah! May the evening breeze
bring boats! They'll come out, they'll consent,
the golden puppets after an accident.
I await whatever the horizon sends
to the leaden statue of my indifference.
O sea like varnish layer upon layer
O sea do you shake your delirious scales
for old hopes, disappointed, bringing ill?
Your turrets of foam above the rocks
announce the news with still more shocks
ghost of friends lost in death or fates
Oh well-loved days, turned, forever past.
Page after page! After each turning trace
the map? an ace? alas! the page! the beach, the place...
I wait to see what hero I might be
(you'll still be waiting for him when he comes)
I wait to love my God as I love men's limbs
I wait to love you more than the earth,
Jesus, Adam, and You, Mother of sacred birth.
“Stella Maris, comme l’on dit,” La Nouvelle Revue Française, July 1934, 21.
Literary Matters, 2017