Keep the Void Open — Web Exclusive
By Vahé Godel
Translated by Victor Pambuccian
To Ion Caraion (in memoriam)
what's to be done
when there's nothing left to do?
rise up
hide away
howl
be quiet
lend an ear,
open the eyes, stick out your tongue, remove your last arrow, settle down, grow warts on your face, lose your footing, find a language, perforate your target, plunge to the bottom of the chasm, hell or heaven, it doesn't matter, stretch out the time of the plunge for as long as possible, sink, endlessly sink, long-drawn-out hesitation between sound and sense, correspondence between image and song, thunder and cry, the eye listens, the ear sees, complicity of the eye and the mouth, the eye drinks, the mouth lights up, the devouring eye and the bedazzled mouth, gesture joining voice, a matter of breathing and fingering, the mouth obeys the finger no less than it does the eye, it's a matter of rhythm, for the most part, which has to do with music, yes, a matter of ear, the distress call sent by hunters lost in the deep woods, thus a rhythm, a sound, a little noise, the sound I make when I feel most at ease with myself, if you want, a kind of audible writing, a music, a rhythm, who says rhythm says form (those mysterious series of little marks, those regular incisions, made on fragments of shinbones, of shoulder bones or of skulls, about 35 000 years before Christ: that's perhaps how the most ancient rhythmic representations look like), a rhythm, a form, a rhythm, a form, it's the rehearsal that generates the rhythm, a form, a music, a music in which there is much silence, a language made up entirely of little dreams, a web of dreams (as in: a web of lies)
what's to be done
when memory sinks
and hope
flies away?
close your eyes
walk in front of yourself
on luminous waters
tame
the absence of birds
birds, the absence, the
silence (silentio que canta), yes, that’s it, a nothingness trying to find shape, a hole, a whole, a hole that’s mow ejecting, now engulfing me, a whole reduced to bits and pieces, proliferation, pulsation, pulverization
what's to be done
in the middle of the desert?
seize the unseizable
reduce the sand universe
to syllables
of a single stanza
make the void desirable
the void, the desert,
desire, I'm looking for salvation in an aphorism, a singing silence, yes, for everything holds together in reality, from the same desert and the same night, everything is connected, everything betrays us, the voice, the silence, the eyes . . . what does remain in the end? a mixture, a texture, a garment, a seamless gown, silkier than silk, but, oddly enough, in this instance, it's clothes that give rise to the body to be clothed, the body submits to the standards of the fabric, really, undressed the body doesn’t exist—nude (null)
what's to be done in times like these?
slow down slow down
the crowds are on our heels
we ought to move as little as possible
so slow down, move
as little as possible . . . yet what matters most is to not lose the thread, not lose the lead, saw the song, put the bits and pieces together, be both rhapsode and mosaic tiler, memory and melody, writing and painting, eclogue and galaxy, image and blank page, text and engravings, chamber music and password
rise up
hide away
howl
be quiet
refuse to be
quiet, preserve, perpetuate the use and power of the word . . . I repeat myself, yes, I certainly do, I keep rehearsing, I keep going back to the same story, I endlessly repeat myself, I turn around myself, yes, I turn, turn, turn, made drunk by this circular movement leading nowhere…for if I am a rhapsode and a mosaic tiler, moreover, I am a kind of turning dervish, writing is a spiral that opens over the abyss of being, the poetical is a circular production, my body is the hub of an invisible wheel, all of life takes place, all living things turn around a center, itself moving around a center, endlessly . . . our model is in the sky, yes, all those bodies that break all the time yet their movement prevents them from falling during all those mishaps, all those fragments, all those figures, all those traces . . . this whole disaster—this craving for disaster . . . which means that, for once, one should above all not be afraid of the fall, no, by all means, not be afraid of the void, . . . what's more: one should give preference to the fall, always keep the void open
Poet and translator Vahé Godel was born in 1931 in Geneva to an Armenian mother and a Romandy father. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, as well as the translator of numerous volumes from Armenian into French.
Victor Pambuccian is a professor of mathematics at Arizona State University and the translator of Romanian poems by Tzara, Fundoianu, Blecher, and Celan. The above translation, as well as the one in Counterfeits, were supported by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia.
This poem is published in conjunction with Counterfeits, the 18th volume of TWO LINES, which includes more of Victor Pambuccian translations of Vahé Godel. To learn more and order your own copy, visit this page.