by Narcís Comadira

                Sous le pont Mirabeau, coule la Seine     

                                           APOLLINAIRE

Sena profund, discorres
a bon pas sota els ponts melancòlics,
banyes l’illa de la Ciutat,
on regna Notre-Dame, cristall d’alè,
la de torres quadrades. Aculls
—grogues com les estrelles grogues—
les fulles esgotades dels pollancres dels quais:
així vas acollir aquell que havia dit
que la pàtria del poeta és la llengua,
ni que la llengua sigui l’alemany
i el poeta, jueu.

Vas acollir-lo com la fulla fràgil
d’un arbre fatigat
al cor del teu corrent glaçat i espès.
I ell, que et degué mirar
com un doll de memòria trobadissa,
ell, que duia un farcell prou feixuc
de llengua exiliada, de dubte i sofriment,
va trobar en tu
un coixí de cascalls on reposar per sempre.

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Conversation
by Nick Laird

You can’t believe the kind of thing
my kind go on about, and I in turn can’t
understand the way your lot continually

shout, and shout each other down, and eat as if
someone’s about to lift their plate and smash it.
I’d point out what we talk about we talk about

because we speak in code of what we love.
Here. Where afternoon rain pools in the fields
and windows in the houses facing west turn gold.

A flatbed lorry pulls out of the lane.
The mysteries of planning permission.
How someone got pregnant or buried.

The local TV listings. Bankruptcies.
Failed businesses. Convictions. How someone
put the windows in up at the Parish Hall.

How someone else was nailed to a fence.
How they gutted a man like a suckling pig
and beat him to death with sewer rods.

>> Read the translations