from Decarceration by Charline Lambert, translated from the French by John Taylor

forehead of the sky
.
You are a countable solitude.
.
You are a light shattered
into beams.
.
You are
a barely recognized
fire.
.
*
You want to decarcerate the language from you,
decar—
.
cerate these words from your plexus
and every day
you elucidate a knot.
.
*
.
In a single movement
you don’t know if you’re taking part
.
in the pursuit
or
the reiteration.
.
*
.
You are full to the brim
with coagulated matter.
.
Ever since, you counter
the slow work
of exsanguination.
.
*
.
Your great fervor to forget:
too great
this tumor where
can it be cut out, where
are the healthy tissues
.
*
.
Joy and the other
joy you hold out
.
drunk with it,
a latent
blow to the forehead
.
of the sky.
.
—from Désincarcération (©Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2017)
.
French originals:

.

Tu es une solitude à dénombrer.
.
Tu es une lumière éclatée
en faisceaux.
.
Tu es
un feu
à peine reconnu.
.
*
Tu veux désincarcérer le langage de toi,
désincar-
.
cérer ces mots de ton plexus
et chaque jour
tu élucides un nœud.
.
*
.
D’un seul mouvement
tu ne sais si tu en es
.
la poursuite
ou
la réitération.
.
*
.
Tu es une matière coagulée
parvenue à satiété.
.
Depuis tu contres
un lent travail
d’exsanguination.
.
*
.
Ton ardeur à l’oubli trop
grande
.
trop grande
tumeur où découper
où sont les tissus sains
.
*
.
La joie et l’autre
joie que tu tends,
.
de tout ton soûl
latente
frappe à la tempe
.
du ciel.
.
Charline Lambert ((c) photo by Sadie von Paris)
Charline Lambert was born in 1989 in Liège, Belgium. She is the author of four books of poetry: Chanvre et lierre (“Hemp and Ivy,” Éditions Le Taillis Pré, 2016), Sous dialyses (“Dialyzing,” Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2016), Désincarcération (“Decarceration,” Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2017), and Une salve (“A Salvo,” Éditions L’Âge d’Homme, 2020). She is currently finishing her Ph.D. thesis on the relation between poetry and deafness.
.
John Taylor’s most recent translations are, from the French, José-Flore Tappy’s Trás-os-Montes (The MadHat Press) and Philippe Jaccottet’s Ponge, Pastures, Prairies (Black Square Editions), as well as, from the Italian, Franca Mancinelli’s The Butterfly Cemetery: Selected Prose 2008-2021 (The Bitter Oleander Press). His most recent books of poetry are Transizioni, a bilingual volume published in Italy by LYRIKS Editore and illustrated by the Greek artist Alekos Fassianos, and Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees (The Bitter Oleander Press), illustrated by the French artist Caroline François-Rubino. He lives in France.
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.
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