Introductory Note

René Char (1907 -1988) remains one of the leading French poets of the 20^th Century. Elliptical, at times surreal, his poetry maintains a close sense of his specific place, the Vaucluse region. With a condensed, precise style that holds fast to life’s complexity and ambivalence, Char’s poetry rises out of and speaks to a passion for Beauty, a strong need to create Beauty, to respond to its presence, to let its mark be there on the edges of a harsh, violent world.

Declaring Your Name

I was ten. The Sorgue made me a diamond in its shining halo. The sun would sing the hours on the river’s wise clockface. Alternate carefree days and hard suffering had fixed weathercocks to the roofs of houses and each supported the other. But in the watchful child’s heart what wheel was turning, spinning more violently, much faster than the mill wheel in its white fire?

The Epte Woods

That day I was nothing but two legs walking.

My gaze dry, my face a blank,

I set out to follow the creek down the valley.

A humble vagabond, that drab hermit remained aloof from

the tangled formlessness into which I was always moving forward.

Leaning out from the still-standing corner wall

of a house long ago gutted by fire,

two wild rosebushes plunged suddenly into the grey water.

Filled with a sweet unbending wilfulness,

they seemed tokens of long vanished beings

ready any moment to announce their return.

The roses’ rough flesh-colour broke the water,

gave the sky back its new-born face, its delirium of questions.

With tender love words they awoke the earth,

thrusting me, their feverish starved implement, into the future.

The Epte Woods began one bend further on,

but I had no need to go there, to enter

that beloved storehouse of renewal.

As I turned back I breathed in the stench

of fields where an animal lay buried.

I heard a shy grass snake slither,

I knew – don’t judge me too harshly – that day

I was fulfilling each one’s wishes.

Navigating

Pass by.

The sidereal spade

has long since foundered here.

Tonight far above us

a village of birds exults and passes.

At rocky temples

with their scattered presences

listen for the word that will make your sleep

warm as a tree in September.

My branching, my anxious thirst,

look how they all shift,

the interweaving certainties that close beside us

reached their essence.

The harshness of living

endlessly grinds down to a rage for exile.

In a fine almond rain

mingled with calm freedom

your protective alchemy happens,

my beloved.

Mortal debris and Mozart

At daybreak, just once, the old pink-edged cloud emptied of all things human will drift above distanced eyes in the majesty of its slow freedom; then cold sets in again, occupying everything, then Time, a one-sided coin, its future erased.

Along the line of his two lips, on common ground, suddenly the allegro, defying divine rejection, pierces through and flows back towards the living, towards the totality of men and women in mourning for the inner homeland. Wandering at random to avoid being identical, through Mozart they are about to sound their own depths in secret again.

- Beloved, when you dream out loud and by chance pronounce my name, tender conqueror of our conjugated fears, of my lonely abasement, the night is clear to cross.

The scrupulously searching woman

The flood was rising. The open countryside, the embankment, the slim separate trees were sealed off by pools some of which had joined together to form a lake. In an overcast sky a lark was singing. Here and there bubbles broke the water’s surface - perhaps a small rodent or a snake swimming away to make its escape. The road still remained intact. The outskirts of a village appeared. Resolute and happy we pressed forward. It was beautiful weather for our wandering. I was walking between You and that Other who was also You. With both my hands I clutched your naked breast. A few villagers on their doorstep or busy with washing greeted us favourably. My fingers hid your marvellous wonder from them. Would it have shocked them? One of You stopped to chat and smile. We continued. I still had the landscape on my right and the road ahead of me. A bull in the distance waited for us in his usual place. It struck me that the lyre made by his horns was trembling. I loved you. But I reproached one of you who lingered on the path, among the inhabitants of the houses, with being too familiar. Certainly among us she could only be imagined as your belated childhood. I surrendered to the evidence. In the village she was caught up by the school and that manner held by communities long used to temporising with danger. Even the danger of floods. Now we had reached the edge where very old trees began and the solitude of memories. I wanted to ask for your beloved and eternal name that my soul had forgotten: “I am the scrupulous seeker”. The beauty of deep waters lulled us to sleep.