Two Poems by Jean Daive

Pense Bête, Marcel Broodthaers, 1964

Choir

Similar to the attention
like I say to him similar to
the identical.
He concludes. He remains to resemble
and such. Chambers without table or wall.
Chambers with a sun
entirely.

Then
the children show that
the sun is entire. As if
I find myself right now.
Similar to repeating which the attention instructs
(was it a raft
produced by our
elbows?). I am here. Then the children
learn that the morning has no difference
and that the phrase is identical
because of the object
preparation.
I am here
loving it, but also
eating is the phrase of here or speaking.
Because we need to respond now. Responding, that is
continuing
and waiting, that is the return of the event.
In fact, it is like a lady, but it is different
who mentions
for the first time that three
could do.
My willow
is
more. A quantity at the corner
of the telegram and my grammar.
Being
regarding the blue. And first now.
Or only now. No. First
of the part
of now, here. That is to say of
each of which the first grasps thinking truly necessary
cake and rural.
Thanks for the planking. It finishes
everything.

***

Commentary of a portrait
in reality
of a progression reproduced in our manuscript.
Plank I: Everything
is
lacuna would look for the trace
or better the loss of notebooks.
This is explainable in several ways: I edit
I don’t transcribe the interruption
of the outline under the dictate of an addition
then the problem
and if we are lacuna or
piece detached from our suppositions
at last the signature amputates from the
beginning.
So everything supposes something provisory.
Plank II: The orthography varies
handy like the division of apparatuses.
Plank III: He has come in his
achievement of which I speak. So we have to understand
the words he has come in his achievement
like a world after me
absent from the preceding passages.
Henceforth, I am simply a man.
But certainly in the past participle (did he speak or
did he come?)
the text adds to my nature.
The eyes, in other words what precedes me
evoke the clouds whereof the word theory
spoke.
The contemplation designs here also
the blissful hereafter.
Plank IV: Carried along to the encounter of the lake and
the purified, the simple and not
send off the precursor in a different way.
Plank V: Who are you?
The response (it’s not me) is a
first way of understanding only the manner
of none other.
Plank VI: He is the limit of a letter.
But who is the manner of all things.
Now redress the test of the road and divide who
has cried. A shoe is in your
midst, the natural figure
who is hiding in the house. It is the
next day of paradise.

***

Trembles at the accent
which he disintegrates more or less.
[…]

Which are the traces?
A hotel room that he has paid daily
for twenty years.
[…]

Whereas he no longer walks. In the chamber.
A package hangs from the ceiling
thickening. Day after day.
A table on a slope of sagging sand
to paint no more.
[…]

A broken watch. So he starts to paint
oil cans.
The Raving Beauty.
Red, blue, yellow.
Colors that assure him of his end.
Three trunks, therefore painted.
The Raving Beauty.
[…]

He turns to the direction of the noise
reflects in front of a bluish metal.
His fingers on the glass, but also in a motor.
[…]

A car in the course of a velocity
taken from
—Bang!

***

If they are seated or underground
surrounded by women who damage my smile.
I know that they have cemented all the books.
If candles evoke anew
several sequences, this idea
of repetition. We studied the filth
or what it spaces.

Those forgotten things.
Word by word, what they kindle
in my hair.
A slat through the nocturnal
series
heavier loaded
than lit. A day builds up, sleeping
because newspapers would have
filled the tubs.
So there would be a last book
and its first phrase:
“The repeater of the revolution
transforms himself into pure logarithm
of stellar speeds.”

Pant Threat

‘Cause role, in—

dict say everything. “Maia, neurolinguistics, telepathy
India, dance, allometry. Why this transversal of the others
like—”

The chamber would it be under the tent.
Blockage. Aphasia. Brains wherein
a chemistry without page.

Line that

waves.

***

I do not see more than you. Nothing but a wave.
That does not get pierced.
Hears itself. Neurology.
The hand of a simian. His throat supplicates us.
We will have children, trees. We will grow up
we will climb.
That in which it says. Later.
Neurology.
The simians are coming, closing in,
doubling. The kilometer. That. Phonetic language.
The kilometer.

***

A longer phrase. A longer night.
I will not return. More often you
would move back your head.
There are two years of that. An entry will not explode.
Nearly.
Return. Neurology.

***

The flesh would it play a role in.
Speaking garage.
For. Us. Yes.
Case role.
Of.

***

Diaphragm would confirm the question.
Along a manner
the place of the effort
a pressure of air, this response
that takes the consonance.

***

Pieces of flesh pushing left of the sun
an arm
what comes, turns.
You say it is not
will come. Logarithms the back of my chair
responding to the portrait, this simian
left of the sun
he extends his hand
toward you. He will not kill twice.
He will shoot twice.

***

Tile the.
They will throw stones at me
found in a hotel room. Even the animals
will talk very slowly to the bombs.
For the optional use
of the brain.
I will be your sorceress. A habit.
They will enter unto your sleep.
Unto my flesh.
A habit.

***

You sang
to deafen the future’s use.
The battery.
A chord imparts the smoke.
In his turn a simian
will open the radiator.

***

Tree or heating
which you cited. Nearly appearing
in passing in a book.
Comparable to a deafness
that would imply a progression
toward the octave.

***

The simians are sitting on stones
at the level of terrestrial
existence. Their image surpasses our idea
of harmonic functions. Their image
regulated on what they leave behind.

***

A slat
in which this second
would remain.
Disowned that separates
is called I went to bed
and I am marching.
The practice of the mouth
already entered like a construction
in my sleep.

***

A lightness compensates
for the linen
that strangles you. But I will untie you
with one or two lapses.

***

I overhear a conversation.
The simian says to
the angel that typifies himself.
Then offers him
a cigaret.

***

Speaking
in the sense that they currently give
to this word.

***

They block his memory
with a slat.
Then they run for it.

***

K role
the angel will hide himself in a sonority
but first
a simian will have transformed it
into hearing.
Then you arrive, don’t I follow
attaining or let’s see
we will play our personage
vocally
with our laryngeal sacks.
Presence eludes itself, an inquiry
will specify the person.

***

Running early a scale
penetrates the manner
you are not determined
hence your baggage
a simian’s overloaded back
—Schematic but
sensible.
You throw a part of the man.
A paper to—
That of a painted eyelash
if not faster.

***

Subordination
a ringing that he subdivides
in chemical alert—several
these accumulations of sleep.

***

Eyes
like caps, putting down the money
knowing
that a comma displaces itself
according to
the time that.

***

Vocalization or your menace
the language will modulate the sounds
associated to the unwinding of a sequence.
Stamping
then it yawns.

Noting the length of language.

***

A subordination complex maybe
added itself
then to his manual on
the dismemberment of words.

***

A condition is placed like
a plank.
It is a balance. I weigh
an umbrella, three saws
a tire.
Not to name this package
pointer plows.

***

In the receiver
“him”. And several layers of felt.
That looks like the package
that we are.
Inflatable. When our chamber
inflated itself, pneumatic
wǝnsǝ ponǝ taım.

Poems originally published in Narration d’équilibre 2: ‘Sllt’. Via Continent |

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About the Author:

Jean Daive is a Belgian poet and translator.