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Arthur Haulot, Belgium

from Part IV - The Years after 1945

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2018

Dorothea Heiser
Affiliation:
Holds an MA from the University of Freiburg
Stuart Taberner
Affiliation:
Professor of Contemporary German Literature
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Summary

Exorcisme

Pardonnez-moi si ma langue a perdu la forme des promesses.

A trop manger de sel le sol même se corrompt.

Ivrogne imbibé de vins amers

j'ai besoin de la haute complicité des tiges pour subsister.

Ne croyez pas que je caresse mes délires:

je les voudrais naïfs comme ce cou d'enfant.

Mais les marées délivrent trois fois par existence

des boues qui font fermer les yeux aux plus rudes marins.

Il y a certains jours des taches immobiles sur mes fonds de soleil.

Nulle brûlure, nul cri, nul feu, nulle colère, nul refus

ne les peuvent effacer.

L'exorcisme d'aimer ne suffit pas à imposer silence

au fantôme affolé de la peur de la mort.

Peur de la mort? Blasphème.

N'as-tu, dans les os des poignets, dans la torsion du cou,

dans le défi des reins, la vérité qui fut ton Père?

Et cet enfant aux yeux de fleurs

n'est-il là pour porter ton propre témoignage?

C'est la jubilation de Dieu qui lève ses tempêtes dans son cri,

dans son pas.

Rien ne peut plus mourir.

Passager, tu te fais passage.

Le gué s'enchante de ses eaux.

1976

Exorcism

Forgive me if my tongue no longer utters the language of promises.

By absorbing salt the soil itself is poisoned.

A drunkard soaked in bitter wine,

I need the complicity of green shoots to grow.

Do not imagine I indulge my ravings:

I would have them innocent as the neck of a child.

But the tides deliver three times more

Because of the mud that closes the eyes

Of even the toughest sailors.

On certain days an intractable darkness

Obscures my stock of sunlight.

No burning, no cry, no fire, no anger,

no refusal can efface it.

The exorcism of loving has no power to impose its silence

on a phantom crazed by its fear of death.

Fear of death? Blasphemy!

Do you not have in the bones of your wrist, in the twist of your neck,

or in the resistance of your loins, the truth of the Father?

This child whose eyes are flowers

will he not also be a witness for you?

It's God's jubilation that raises the storm

in his cry and in his steps.

Nothing can die any more.

Like a bird of passage you are passing through.

The ford rejoices in its waters.

1976—Translated by David Cooke
Type
Chapter
Information
My Shadow in Dachau
Poems by Victims and Survivors of the Concentration Camp
, pp. 248 - 249
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2014

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