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Paul Vermeersch

A Glass Eye Finds Its Purpose

  • 1 Twenty Days with a Baboon Heart
  • 2 Prosthetic Leg in Storage
  • 3 Smoke | Translations: defr
  • 4 The Painted Beasts of Lascaux | Translations: defr
  • 5 A Glass Eye Finds Its Purpose | Translations: defr
  • 6 Feeding the Deer
  • 7 Garbage Day
  • 8 Notes Toward a Lexicon of the Language of the Bear
  • 9 The Mission House
  • 10 Lambs
Language: english
Translations: german (Song deines Glasauges), french (Un œil de verre trouve sa raison d’être)
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A Glass Eye Finds Its Purpose

I came in a bottle, a prize like the worm
in the mezcal you swallowed
in lieu of an apology. Isn’t it lovely
how I complement your fragile face?

My gold-flecked chestnut iris is
a perfect match to your
gold-flecked chestnut iris, but
I fail to redden when your mood flags,

or when the nervous field-mouse beating
of your heart makes sleep impossible,
or when drinking deepens it
and you awake a little damaged.

I know I’m no great help. I fail to flinch
at the fist that brought me here, raised
in your blind periphery. I fail to see
how I can be of any use to you except

as a decoy. . . to draw away his jabs,
his right hooks and uppercuts, to blur
his wild uneven blows, to lure
your twin ballistic voices, the slurred

epithets you swap, like broken teeth
spat against a wall, to finally bring
the rising, untreatable fever of your love
into the umbra where everything’s equal.

© Paul Vermeersch
From: unpublished
Audio production: 2007, Literaturwekstatt Berlin

Translations:

Language: german

Song deines Glasauges

Ich bin zu dir gekommen in einer Flasche, kostbar wie
Der Wurm im Meskalin, den du ausgesoffen hast,
Statt dich zu entschuldigen. Ich freu mich aber
Weil ich dein zerbrochenes Gesicht fertig mache

Denn wie gut passt meine gold-gesprenkelte Iris
Zu deiner gold-gesprenkelten, aber dann schon nicht mehr, wenn
Sie im Kater rotgeädert und dumpf ist, das
Kann ich nicht ausgleichen.

Auch passe ich nicht, wenn dein Herz pocht wie das
Einer Maus in Angst und du also schlaflos bist
Oder im Gegenteil durch die Trinkerei dein Schlaf bodenlos
Und du wie kaputt erwachst

Ach, wie soll ich dir helfen? Ich kann ja
Seiner Faust nicht ausweichen, die mich einst zu dir brachte
Erhoben in meinem blinden Fleck.
Wie ist denn Hilfe möglich, soll ich

Als eine Art Lockvogel seine Hiebe ablenken,
Den rechten Haken, den Aufwärtshaken auf
Mich ziehen und die vielen ungeraden Schläge,
Anlocken eure ballistischen Stimmen, heisere

Mit denen ihr euch undeutlich anschimpft
Mit gebrochenen Zähnen gegen die Wand gespuckt?

Schließlich bringt uns das steigende und unheilbare Fieber
Deiner Liebe in jenen Kernschatten, wo alles gleichgültig wird.

Deutsche Fassung von Robert Schindel.
Die Übersetzung entstand im Rahmen des Übersetzungsworkshops
Versschmuggel des Poesiefestivals Berlin 2007
Language: french

Un œil de verre trouve sa raison d’être

Je suis arrivé dans une bouteille, un cadeau comme le ver
dans le mezcal que tu as avalé
au lieu d’une excuse. N’est-ce pas charmant
la manière dont je complète ton délicat visage?

Mon iris châtain tacheté d’or
s’accorde parfaitement avec ton
iris châtain tacheté d’or, mais
je n’arrive pas à rougir quand ton humeur flanche,

ou quand le battement de ton cœur, nerveux et rapide
comme une souris, t’empêche de dormir,
ou quand l’alcool l’alourdit
et que tu te réveilles un peu amochée.

Je sais, je ne suis pas d’une grande aide. Je n’arrive pas à tressaillir
devant le poing qui m’a amené ici, levé
dans ton angle mort. Je n’arrive pas à voir
comment je peux t’être d’aucune utilité si ce n’est

comme un leurre… pour distraire ses directs,
ses crochets du droit et ses uppercuts, pour troubler
ses coups sauvages et irréguliers, pour attirer
vos deux voix balistiques, les épithètes

inarticulés que vous échangez, comme des dents cassées
crachées contre un mur, pour finalement amener
la fièvre montante, incurable de votre amour
dans la noirceur où tout est sur un pied d’égalité.

traduit par Marc André Brouillette,
(avec la collaboration d’Arnaud Roi et Steven Corcoran)
Versschmuggel, Poesiefestival Berlin 2007
previous poem
   (The Painted Beasts...)
5 / 10
nächstes Gedicht
(Feeding the Deer)   
listen to all poems

Paul Vermeersch

* 17.11.1973, Mississauga, Canada
lives in: Toronto, Canada

Paul Vermeersch was born in 1973 in Mississauga, Canada. He lives as a poet in Toronto.

In 1998, he founded the I.V. Lounge Reading Series and later published an anthology, The I.V. Lounge Reader (2001).

His poems often tackle themes concerning forces that isolate man from his environment and from his fellow man. Childhood memories and scenes from family life provide him with a canvas for much of his work.

Vermeersch is currently teaching creative writing at Sheridan College in Oakville, Ontario, and he is the Poetry Editor for Insomniac Press in Toronto.

His published works include What You Wish Wasn't True (1999), Burn (2000), The Fat Kid (2002) and Between the Walls (2005).

Publications
  • What You Wish Wasn't True

    Toronto: Wayward Armadillo Press, 1999

  • Burn

    Toronto: ECW Press, 2000

  • The I.V. Lounge Reader

    editor

    Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2001

  • The Fat Kid

    Toronto: ECW Press, 2002

  • Widows & Orphans

    Junction Books, 2003

  • Between the Walls

    Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2005

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