Latest items:

Poetry

	Michel Galiana
	PROFILE About me Friends (8) Poetry (30) Video poems (2)

latest best rating most commented

Michel Galiana, 1 march 2012

Renée Le Glas

I
O listen all attentively
I'll sing you a new melody!
A song about little Renée
Whom her parents married away

This year Renée the Pale was wed
But loved another one, instead.
Everything started when Renée
Has asked her mother one day:

- Pray, what is in our house afoot,
Hearth fire and three caldrons to boot?
One of them red-hot already,
The big and the small, presently?

- I am surprised by your question:
It's to celebrate your union!
- If tomorrow I'm to marry
I'll go to bed immediately.

I'll go immediately to bed
And I'll rise at daybreak, she said.
I'll rise at daybreak tomorrow:
My wedding dress I must narrow. -

Renée the Pale then has addressed
Her little maid with a request:
- My friend, concerning my lover,
Would you do me a small favour?

To my clerk's with this letter go!
His eyes with tears must overflow.
- O my young mistress, this moment
For you I shall go on errand. -

At Kervalbrey's the little maid-
Servant arrived soon and she said:
- My greeting to all everyone!
Tell me where is your eldest son?

- He is in bed, sick and aching
Since he heard of Renée's wedding.
His bed is in the library.
Go, you won't miss him, certainly! -

- Young Clerk, I wish you good morning!
- Good morning, maid who's so charming!
- Here is a note for you to read:
You should peruse it. Go ahead!

- This letter, if it tells the truth,
My anxious mind never will soothe
She has but three days to live! Still
I'll die before. I am so ill! -

II
Renée the Pale said, one morning
At her bedroom's window leaning:
- Over there I see a party
That will cross Diez Wood presently.

Yves Sellar rides ahead of all:
A special curse on him I call!
And on my father and mother,
And all such as raised a daughter

And all such as a daughter raised
Just to decide all in her stead. -
To the church when they all did stroll
They heared the bell for the clerk toll...

Three times the poor girl swooned and fell.
Yves helped her up. Ominous bell!
Renée the Pale told the parson
Who celebrated the union:

- Quick, hurry up! Or I shall pass
Away before you said the mass. -

III
Renée said on entering the house
Where lived the mother of her spouse:

- To your daughter-in-law don't frown,
But show her a bench to sit down!
- I am surprised you should be tired.
Had you not a fine horse to ride?.

- I would have come on foot, for sure,
If this had been a pleasant tour.
If I am your daughter-in-law,
Show me my bed. I will withdraw.

- Over there: in the library.
- My son Yves keep her company!
And in God's name, cheer her up, please!
She did not eat. Make her at ease!

- My beloved one, good day to you.
- Young widower, I greet you, too.
I do not mistake you for such
But soon the word won't be too much! -

She arranged for herself a chair,
And for him, with the greatest care.
- My poor husband, if you love me,
Let me go to the wake, briefly.

To the wake, briefly, let me go.
- To the funeral wake? Oh no!
Since tonight is your wedding night.
But to the interment you might.

- My friend, I'd like, with your consent,
To make my will and testament:
In the pouch of my wedding gown
There's a sum of five hundred crowns:

This will be for you, my husband,
For the expense you had to stand.
The same with the apron I did:
Another fifty crowns are hid.

Please, give them to the little maid:
I bothered her to get her aid
And aimless letters to convey
From Manor Glas to Kervalbrey.

Further, within my cotillion
Are sixty crowns in addition:
Part of it should be for the poor.
But for the priests you'll keep a score,

That they may once for us both pray
Whom in the cold glebe they will lay. -
Upon her lap his head she bent.
Now her life had come to an end.

O God, grant pardon to the dead!
Upon the trestles they were laid.
Their souls to heaven they took flight
They wed before God the same night.

They did not sleep in the same bed,
In the same grave they lie instead
By one another they took stand
To be united by God's hand

Translated from the Breton

number of comments: 1 | rating: 3 | detail

Michel Galiana, 4 february 2012

A Ballad

The wonderful Autumn blew its horns at my pane
Where are the silver horns? Is the hunting over?
They must have lost my scent. The barks are on the wane.
I wail in vain, a mocked lover
Whose years shall not last for ever.

What you sowed in May you must reap in September.
But my seedlings that sprout and diamond-like sparkle
Are dead. Aged wines shan't fill your casks, Vintager!
On twin towers the loving couple
Hail eternally each other.

Thirty three snow white swans that overflew my head.
Thirty three black ravens that shall never fly home.
My legend, a short-lived rose, flourished in my stead
And the loves of the years bygone
Are bewailing the loves to come.

The wonderful Autumn heralds Winter that sounds.
Grooms and whips shall hunt down the doe through the heather.
Barren for evermore shall remain my own grounds
But I shall never get over
Rose nor wheat I didn't gather.

L'automne merveilleux sonnait à ma fenêtre.
Où sont les clés d'argent? Où sont les abois sourds?
La chasse m'oubliait que je vis disparaître.
Je pleure en vain mes faux amours
Mes ans ne seront pas toujours.

Les vendanges de mai s'achèvent en septembre.
Les plans que j'ai semés germent en diamants -
Morts. Le vin qui vieillit n'emplira pas ma tonne.
Sur la tour l'amante et l'amant
S'apellent éternellement.

Trente trois cygnes blancs ont cinglé sur ma tête.
Trente-trois noirs corbeaux. Vous ne reviendrez plus.
Ma légende fleurit comme aux rosiers la fête.
Les amours disparues
Pleurent aux avenues.

L'automne merveilleux est un hiver qui sonne.
Les chasseurs traqueront le faon nu par les prés.
Le champ qu'on me donna jamais ne se moissonne.
Je n'ai pas oublié
La rose ni les blés.

number of comments: 0 | rating: 1 | detail

Michel Galiana, 9 january 2012

The hawk

Hawk who shake, off your wings, comets and falling stars,
A brass plate now freezes your fits of wrath, a nail,
Red hearted bead supposed to cast on wolves a spell,
Confined in a showcase, your preyless pounce can't start.

Which etching fluid did drench your claws in keen impulse?
Which rage towards rivals? Was it the ring, the chain?
Which stainless blood your wing to other blood did strain?
Which feast did in your flesh flare up such revivals?

Since the hood is removed, in full light, you're blinded
By a blue sky that is, like the night, dark, endless.
You are lift up by fear, by hunger or by death

Which are of more divine essence than mock hatred.
Your soaring by your feast's squirting blood besmirched:
Is your fate an image of a self-gnawing heart?

Epervier, ébrouant étoiles et comètes,
Un blason figera tes colères, un clou,
Astre au poitrail rougi envoûtera le loup.
Sous vitrine brisés, tes vols sans vols s'émettent.

Quel acide nimbait tes crocs d'instincts jaloux?
Quelle rage vers tes rivaux, bague, non chaîne?
Quel sang inaltéré vers outre sang s'empenne?
Quel festin dans tes chairs qui se ranime et joue?

Le corselet ravi t'aveugle, clarté pleine,
L'azur qui semble nuit, nuit qui n'aura de fin.
Te soulèvent la peur, ou la mort, ou la faim,

Comme un bord plus divin que prétexte ta haine.
Le sang de ton festin constelle ton essor.
D'un coeur qui se rongea, figures-tu le sort?

number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Michel Galiana, 3 january 2012

Beauty

...luggage nor -on the shore they'd left the ship behind
And carried on their way - they were cast out, could be
Present, as they had guessed the word, and they would find
The temple that had surged in their dream. As for me

I have encountered you there where the storms would roar
Obsessively amidst the infernal orchards.
Our blood started to flow back where neither age nor
Body could quench their thirst. Insensitive strangers

To anything except terror, our sole refuge,
A shiver has seized us and we were like the slave
Whom the white man's cudgel with showering abuse
And hails of hits drives towards his prison-grave.

One morning you were born in the shine of a rose -
"Love is bare". But this was beyond understanding
For voyagers who had, to better plead their cause
At the King's judgment seat, loaded with precious things

Their bark - To unforgotten womb, we went back then
To ponderous silence and blood that ever spouts
And twenty walking days later, 't was in the den
Of Sibyl that the fire at last spoke and without
Luggage...

***
Like the stars that high up sparkle above our heads,
Rumbling escorted us restlessly, all the way,
Over valleys and hills and stood me in good stead
Since I have found at last the gleam that once took me

To this strange universe of snow, of ice, of storm;
And when awakening is nigh, a melody
Ruthlessly assails me and, stubborn, I return
To be reborn in you, ever remote - beauty!

BEAUTE

...bagages ni - laissant la nef sur la rive
Ils poursuivirent leur chemin - rejetés,
Présents, ayant percé le mot et arrivèrent
Au temple en songe surgi. Je t'ai

Rencontrée quand brasillaient les orages
Et les obsessions au coeur des vergers
Infernaux. Notre sang reflua où l'âge
Ni le corps ne s'abreuvèrent. Etrangers

A tout hors la terreur qui fut notre unique
Refuge, un tremblement nous saisit et nous
Fûmes pareils à l'esclave que la trique
Du blanc vers l'ergastule pousse à grands coups.

Née un matin à la lueur d'une rose-
"Amour est nu". Les voyageurs ne comprirent
Pas. Ils avaient pour appuyer leur cause
Auprès du roi, chargé d'étoffes de prix

Leur barque - Nous avons regagné le ventre
Inoublié, le silence lourd, le sang -

Après vingt jours de marche ce fut dans l'antre
De Sibylle que le feu parla et sans...

****
Comme des astres scintillant sur nos têtes,
Le grondement qui nous aura poursuivis,
Par vals et monts jusqu'à nos dernières fêtes.
J'ai retrouvé la lueur qui m'a ravi

Dans un univers de blizzards et de glace.
Sur le seuil de l'éveil je reviens, hanté
D'une musique sans pitié pour tenace
Renaître en toi l'inaccessible - beauté.

number of comments: 0 | rating: 0 | detail

Michel Galiana, 27 december 2011

Slumbering peaks

Slumbering peaks deep in our hearts,
Crystals that no flights ever touch,
You are impassable hindrance.
And storms raised by far histories
Do not roar on these boundaries
Where music is supreme silence.

But if the temples' crashing down,
And for a love lost wail and moan
Sometimes furrow this silent spell
Never may they eagles compel
Their silent hovering to bend
That no arrow ever attained.

I have dived where your image slept
And crunched underfoot clinkers left
By happiness. And the remorse
At having failed to seize my bliss
And left smile vanish from your lips
Subsided as did memories
Of you. But I shall never wean
My throat off the now dried up stream.

Les cimes dorment
Les cimes dorment au fond du coeur
Cristal que n'effleurent pas les fuites
Inaccessibles,
Et les tornades des histoires lointaines
Ne retentissent pas à ces confins
Où la musique est suprême silence.

Mais si le fracas des temples écroulés
Et la plainte de l'amour perdu
Sillonnent parfois ces silences,
Ils n'effleurent pas même la paix.
L'aigle plane, inaccédé,
Et nulle flêche ne trouble
Son vertige.

J'ai plongé où dormait ton image.
Les scories du bonheur s'écrasaient sous mes pieds,
Le remord de n'avoir su être heureux,
Celui de ton sourire éteint
S'effaçaient à leur tour come ton souvenir.
Mais rien ne pourra apaiser la soif
De cette coupe où nous ne sumes boire.

number of comments: 1 | rating: 5 | detail

Michel Galiana, 10 december 2011

Alphabet

A brightly coloured day encouraging freely
Great hordes in joyfully knowable lavishness
May not order people queer rogues so to undress
Without xenophobic yesterday's zealotry.

Astres, brutes chaussées d'effrois, frêles granules,
Hautains, incendiez, joyaux, kriss lumineux,
Mais n'osez pas que rois souterrains, ténébreux,
Ululant vers wadi, xènes y zinzinulent!

number of comments: 1 | rating: 3 | detail

Michel Galiana, 9 december 2011

Crystal body

To become a mirror. New meanings to contrive.
May the song that you raised become both source and path;
A flawed Aldebaran of closing walls deprived;
A boundless flight sketching in the face of the wraith
Who surrounded your rest, your sense, with your own fire.

A sphere changed to hub distorts your memory.
Can the wing be the point whence tears itself the cry?
Inmost depths where the scroll unrolls transparency,
A forbidden knowledge where the world is inscribed.

Stubbornly breaking waves shall dispose of your spears,
And your beacon's glitter shall sink into this jail,
Sheer radiance, your final display at last appears.

A diamond shall tip the restless, wobbling scales.
Sparkles shall blind your eyes. Silence shall numb your ears.

Corps de cristal
Devenir le miroir. Réinventer le sens.
Le chant que tu levas deviendra source, sente,
Aldebaran fautive où les murs sont absents.
Un vol illimité dessinera l'absente
Qui cerne de tes feux tes haltes et tes sens.

Une sphère en moyeux agence ta mémoire.
L'aile est-elle le point d'où s'arrache le cri?
Transparence, au tréfonds déroule le grimoire.
Un savoir interdit où le monde s'inscrit.

L'onde en bris renoué dispersera ta lance
Et lueur, en l'éclat englouti, ton fanal,
Le seul rayonnement formera ton final.

Le diamant immobilisera la balance.
Eblouissement. Scintillation. Silence.

number of comments: 1 | rating: 4 | detail

Michel Galiana, 8 december 2011

Stone slab

I was caught in a whirl, with loud shouts and drum rolls,
Flags streaming in the wind, delirious prophecies,
Squirting blood... Suddenly, from their feasts I was torn
And fell into rest which ignores time and worries.

I shut a crystal door on my new peacefulness.
Once the tumult had ceased, I was god, though vanquished
I saw how wings fluttered high above my recess,
But nothing would upset now my secluded bliss.

And a stubborn repose limits my violence.
I don't know if I am a dream or a soldier,
Nor the place of the fight causing my hesitance,

Nor shall I know under whose standard and order
I fought, the day I'll throw away helmet, shield, lance
And flee this rubbish fray for a bed of silence.

Stele

Un tourbillon m'a pris. Eclats, tambours battants,
Pavillons claquetant, délires de prophètes,
Sang giclant, quand soudain arraché à leur fêtes
Je chus dans ce repos qui ne connaît de temps.

Le cristal sur ma paix referma ses battants.
Le tumulte apaisé, je fus ciel et défaite.
Je voyais s'agiter des ailes sur mes faîtes,
Mais rien ne dérangeait mes lointains éclatants.

Un sommeil obstiné borne ma violence.
J'ignore si je suis le songe ou le soudard,
Où se tient ce conflit qui m'habite et balance

Et je n'aurai connu quel fut mon étendard
Quand je déserterai, jetant casque, écu, lance,
Ce combat de copeaux sur un lit de silence.

number of comments: 1 | rating: 7 | detail

Michel Galiana, 2 december 2011

Plea of darkness

Your face, mirrored, shows you what my own face is like,
But hides your secret pain, and what for in my night
I exude and secrete my chant and my venom.
On the quiet looking glass my mould will hold and shape
The shadow you fancied was there your self to ape
And it proved the ghost right whom you called a demon.

When you'll set to decline a storm will be rising,
A last whirlwind will shake the uppermost roofing
Of the stronghold which you imagined to have built.
Crushed timber, ruined pillars will your decay proclaim.
As a harsh usurer, I'll insist on my claim.
No one may go to court who ignores law and bill.

I bought your eloquence from taciturnity,
Taught you the dawning day, the flowers, the dainty
Dance of the little girl in her garden who sprouts:
Which judge could then deny that you're to me in debt?
In night nuggets the weight of feasts must be repaid
And once judgment is passed, appeal must be shut out.

Over yonder, heralds shall proclaim the sentence.
Onto the trees bailiffs shall nail the penitence
And to escape from gibe and from your punishment,
Hunted by alien glee, rejected from all dance,
You shall take refuge in my preserve of silence
Where your days may be spent as a mere entombment.

Plaidoyer de l'ombre

Tes visages mirés t'enseignent mon visage,
Mais non ton mal secret, mais non pour quel usage
Je distille en ma nuit mes chants et mes poisons.
Ma forme au tain qui dort hèle, fixe et façonne
Le reflet que tu crus ton compagnon et donne
Au fantôme que tu nommais larve, raison.

Lorsque sur ton déclin montera la tempête,
Un dernier tourbillon ébranlera le faîte
Du palais que pour toi tu crus bâtir. Les bois
Rompus, les piliers chus diront ta déchéance.
Tenace usurier, j'invoque ma créance.
Or, nul ne peut plaider s'il ignore les lois.

Pour avoir acheté ta parole au silence,
Pour t'avoir enseigné, l'aube, les fleurs, la danse
De la fille au jardin lorsque germe le sang,
Quel juge à mon égard pourra nier ta dette?
En pépites de nuits, je veux le poids des fêtes
Et que l'arrêt rendu, l'appel soit impuissant.

Outre rive, un héraut clamera la sentence.
Aux arbres le recors clouera ta pénitence
Et pour n'ouïr ta peine et le rire qui ment,
Traqué par tout bonheur, chassé de toute danse,
Tu gagneras mon fief encerclé de silence
Pour que tes jours ne soient qu'un engloutissement.

number of comments: 0 | rating: 6 | detail

Michel Galiana, 30 november 2011

The Moray

Under the old fort's walls flashes past the moray.
Its fair body is tanned by the salt and the sun.
Did sun light upset you where reaches no more ray
Or some fit of fever prompt you to this rash run?

Buccaneers once looted there where dwelt the moray.
One might the craggy cliffs climb up to their fortress.
But to sap walls of hate who would go on foray,
With a kiss force open this white enamelled mass?

Oblivion now covers the realm of the moray
And mere silt ebbs and flows watched by rusty bombards.
A skull on a pale in no mood for amore
Challenges my banners, my flags and my standards.

LA MURENE

Sous les remparts -éclair- cingle la murène,
Beau corps bruni par le sel et le soleil.
Est-ce au soleil faute si je te mus reine
Ou d'un appel à quelque fièvre pareil.

Le boucanier pillait où fut la murène
De ses fortins escalader les redans.
Mais quel piton pour jeter bas ce mur haine,
Planter la langue au blanc massif de ces dents?

A pris l'oubli la cité de la murène.
La vase bat sous la garde des canons.
Au pic brandi tournoie un chef, hure haine,
Pour remplacer mes bannières et pennons.

number of comments: 0 | rating: 2 | detail

10 - 30 - 100