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What Sparks Poetry is a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our new series focused on Translation a group of poet-translators share a seminal experience in translation. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.
Sébastien Smirou
Translated from the French by Andrew Zawacki
1: The paw

If I entered the dance my foot on the floor of gold
on a motif abandoned for a long time the lion
let’s say emblazoned with sand in your eyes—at base
it’s very human—we wouldn’t see a drop (no animalaprops)
just sable to print my paw in reaction
ideally I’d paint the least stroke staining
the sense following my only shadow on the tableau
shows however we can’t remake ourselves—better see about that.


2: The mustache

Left right left as a result I found the time
of a length for scoping his mustaches out
to the final crimsons as if by sniffing
patience and the nose knows here is what we needed
to see my lion efface the photo director to his delight
I can’t get over it the gnu the zebu us in the middle
of herds swarming in fish flash we felt swell the air until the
puff clearing off still majesty—better see about that.


3: The odor

To approach the man I am sometimes
without thinking about it I change to a lioness in the grass high
fidelity regained from the sisters who act as if
it wasn’t the odor of young mothers I borrow the poses
the craziest ones confounding me each time with a beauty
consummated in the same fell swoop I rush to repaint paradise
in my image the king casts a glance into the apple tree reddened
by a thousand other tries—better see about that.


4: The claws

(As in image 24 of Portugal I like
so much I drew a blank like so in less
time than one needs to black out and return to himself
in the interval between your claws and your tail I scouted for a rhyme
a clause a thing in sum leonine (and how
I came thru it) but in this mass ruffled
of my disjunction we have seen only smoke:
no memory of nada for example—better see about that.)


5: The roar

Got to believe that everything here bonds together quick in the eyes
of the team one feels suddenly the zebra is stripped
for his part from the landscape in a python is still believable
but in a lion my little fellow bellows
the old recorder of chagrin sound (the cry of the dead would it be
the Grail of our expedition?) you can’t hear a bit of that
challenge (except to eat lion) to challenge I tell you
to return to the country empty-handed—better see about that.


6: The ears

The next day goes down in the area around the watering hole
spotted one of the biggest specimens among the trees
before which tremble surprisingly two leaves
two new leaves sprout at random hidden on the other bank
of the hand between the thumb and the one-eyed index finger
I try homothetically to take the measure of it
aroused by the potential prey and the sky going gray
to attain the age of the captain—better see about that.


7: The mane

Masked by the vertigo of this alignment on the other
side of the king banished from the view of everyone for his display
of boredom to the wind struts by way of the lookalike
a young cock there’s no word harsher the mane
in crew cut and that comes just to nitpick a fight
at the center of our world we deduct it from the swelling
of his mane—if it’s not him then his brother
and not right now a fatal day—better see about that.


8: The teardrop

My own strategery is posed on its back from a bivouac
of the familiars I frequent I send it some signs:
I’ve got a tear in my eye black of an old male in mind
my little wife of beauty bygone we say without reflecting
these psychedelic dreams where I’m zoomorphic—must discuss
relaxed along the field I give the feeling of a feeling
worth two cents I charge as usual blood rush my head spinning
I trigger a sort of revolution—better see about that.
from the journal AUFGABE
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Color image of the cover to the journal Aufgabe, Vol. 10
What Sparks Poetry:
Andrew Zawacki on Sébastien Smirou's "The Lion"

"The orthodox part of the evening once completed, we turned to our current project—very much under construction—namely, the English translation of Sébastien’s sophomore book, a bestiary titled Beau voir....The plan was Sébastien’s, inspired tangentially by the so-called 'torture test' that Olivier Cadiot and Pierre Alferi had devised, which involved translating Robert Duncan’s falconer-mother back and forth between English and French, so the original would bloom anew through its successive degradations."
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Color photograph of Wendy Raphael Roberts sitting at a desk
"New Poem by Famed Early American Poet Phillis Wheatley"

University of Albany professor, Wendy Raphael Roberts, found the elegy, “On the Death of Love Rotch," in an 1767 commonplace book. "The discovery expands Wheatley’s canon at a time of growing interest in and scholarship around the poet, and provides new evidence for her presence and influence in Nantucket; New Bedford, Mass.; and Newport, R.I.; which were home to early abolitionist movements in the U.S."

via UNIVERSITY OF ALBANY
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