The Ash of the Burning Feast

Translation of the book Les trésors tamisés,
by
François Baril Pelletier

nominated for the GG Prize in French Poetry
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Amongst the crimson seas
in the crux
of the interior flood

etheric drownings

amongst the plenitudes

is sown a grain
of atomic truth

droplet of countless

galaxies

which sizzle
alive
of ancestral blaze

 

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We the fragile wineskins
degradable ghosts
of breath and of clay
spirits of sources and humus
recycled corpses

we are the running streams

on the edges of hope and turmoil
and the stars are waltzing
in our hearts
like a dream

 

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From our lifeless deserts
in the depths of our mines
the private shivers

moans the cruel emptiness
of a lover’s breed
between the stretches
of the loving soul
as a fountain sprinkling
its waters
in its most intimate
and poor
nakedness

 

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Monstrous love
roams
in our viscera
embryo of glimmering lights
heart of thirsts

furtive
thirsts

incommensurable thirsts

in these majestic steppes

carmine interiors

vivid aridity
digged
by old regrets

the flows of emptiness

the hope that is chiselled by the winds of July

 

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Like the sumptuous seed
richness is contagious
and one can give meaning
to the man who has lost
onyx vision
like a crystal dropped
on the opaque

for love is reaped
in sterile oases
on islands of drought
in defamed gardens

where one can and will only dream
of thirsts

 

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©François Baril Pelletier