XII OBSTETRIQUE

Je fus l'écho d'un baiser du mai qui passe
Quand l'été pointait dans la rumeur du sang.
Je fus l'écho. Tonnant, terreur jamais lasse,
La nuit heurtait- martellement incessant

Et flux coulant de plus loin que ces entrailles
Où j'étais ver, univers - puis je connus
Qu'un feu brûlait hors de l'écran des murailles
Je devins rêve entre deux gouffres et n'eus

Désir qu'éclat d'un acier crevant ma guangue
(Oh ce tournoiement de comètes, l'assaut
Par les remous vers l'abri pour en l'exsangue
M'anéantir, connaître un premier berceau)

Et devinais l'été qu'ils nommaient fournaise
Le dragon aux écailles dures, le chant
Pour oublier le poing tapant - douceur- l'aise:
Flotter bercé, couler jusqu'au fond et chancelant

Apprendre une nouvelle promesse
- Hors le cachot débute l'enchantement
Du pied fermé, du sol qui frappe et qu'on presse,
Anéanti dans un recommencement -

Alors siffla le jet qui creuse et qui vrille
Son tourbillon, conque savante du son
Je n'étais plus grotte qui borne et fourmille,
Mais gouffre ouvert à la plus vaste leçon,

(Un choc fut le début et le déclin, une
Epouvante fit l'astre et le tourbillon
Surgis du vide et recreusant du vide, unité
Ouvrant dans l'espace le sillon

D'où montèrent les divinités - les Nornes
Blanches, Kali, Démogorgon, Pan, amants
Enlacés sous la lumière de la Corne,
Tous dérivant vers l'anéantissement)...

Puis la blancheur fut l'aube de la paupière.
Etais-je perle, illuminé de rayons?
Douceur tintait que je croyais coutumière
Du sang, du son, mêlés comme des maillons.

Ai-je franchi les portes de cet automne
Enseveli plus loin que les souvenirs,
Aux grottes d'où sourdent les chants monotones,
Enchantement qui ne devait pas finir?

Quand soufflèrent les vents glacés, quand la tente
(Au début le mot à ce cri mêlé -moi -
Le seul ou le dernier, qui veille et invente
L'inextricable qui deviendra la loi

Dont le cercle prévaudra) que tend la bise
M'enseigna la neige coupante, le froid
Figeant la peau, je sus qu'outre la chair grise
S'achèverait cette paix dont j'étais roi.

Je fus jeté, glaire de cris, de rebellions
Par un hiver où tonnait le faux
Prophète et quand les semailles étaient telles
Que parmi les amandiers poussaient les faux.

Michel Galiana (c) 1991

XII OBSTETRICS

Echo of a kiss blown by leaving May was I
When summer was dawning, causing blood to rumour.
And echo of the frightful thunder which, that night,
Brandished relentlessly, stubbornly its hammer.

A stream  flowed from further away than these entrails
Where I crawled, both a worm and a universe, till
I found that a fire burnt behind the screen of walls.
I was a dream between two abysses and still

Had only one desire: a knife to break the plate
Of my armour (There were whirling comets, assaults
Surrounding my shelter, aimed to annihilate
My bloodless self  that would a cradle never know.)

And I felt the summer which they called a furnace,
Hard-scaled Leviathan, perceived the soothing air
Sung to lull hammering fists - a pleasure, a mildness:
For I could float or sink to the bottom and hear,

Reeling, a new promise that to me now was made:
- Outside of the dungeon begins the enchantment
Of the foot you can stamp, of the ground you can tread.
Once annihilated, I was now renascent!

But hark! a jet has hissed and bored a whirlwind
And cupped it to a conch which deftly trapped the sound.
I was no more a cave, closed and swarming within,
But a chasm gaping for a vaster lesson.

(All began and ended with a shock: it was fear
That had born star and whirl which appeared suddenly
In the void and which dug their way there to make clear
In the space a furrow for the divinities

To rise from - They are called the White Norns and Kali,
Demogorgon, Pan and stood in tender embrace
Under the light that spilt from the Horn of plenty,
Forgetful of the fate that will them all efface.)

Then, whiteness set to dawn through the closed eyelid,
- I wondered if I was pearl-like, irradiating-
And a sweet chime tinkled that, as I imagined,
Used to merge blood and sound like, in a chain, the link.

Did I pass the threshold, at last, of that Autumn
Buried in depths to which remembrance can't extend,
In the caves from which rise songs in a monotone,
Casting on me a spell that never was to end?

When icy winds started to blow and once the tents
(From the outset the word mingling with that cry: -me-
The only or last one which watchfully invents
Entanglements that are destined some day to be

Insuperable law) stretched by the North wind
Had taught me chapping snow and paralysing cold,
I knew as soon as I would strip my flesh coating
The quietness would cease of which I had kept hold.

I was thrown, phlegm of cries mixed up with sedition
In a winter when raged the German false prophet
And when the fields were sown in such curious fashion
That among  almond trees  grew both scythes and fakes.