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THE
PARADE Translation by Mark Spitzer |
La
Parade by Jean Genet |
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SILENCE, we must stay
awake tonight without sitting or lying down each of us, to guard ourselves against the packs. The black rosette of death pricks its flowering heart with a kiss colored by the blood. We must stay awake to cling to the clear ropes of dawn. Charming child, the tower is high where you climb with a snowy foot in the brambles of your clothes the roses of shame are bent. THERE'S SINGING in the eastern courtyard silence wakes the men silence cut by shadow. We are proud to be buttfuckers. Silence again, we must stay awake the executioner will ignore the festivity when the sky takes your head from the pillow by your hair. DURING THE NIGHT of June 17th to 18th, at the camp of the Parade, the execution of thirty thousand adolescents took place. Millions of stars, the splinters of mica, sugar, brambles, honey-suckles, small paper flags, the tracts of the sky, the glory of water, the summer vacations of children, the Mourning, the Absence -- all tried to lend a hand. Without even knowing it, the press spoke a lot about that boy whom a snake charmer buggered, half-dead in the ropes. SLAVES of a sin keeping you in grief through my wrists of foam you twist the killer; his cries and blue crimes drip ink in your eye which reveals and fogs you with death. Oh my pale thieves, guard this son of the gods so he can croak! Your black uniform is his death. Now, the child on the straw stretches his leafy ankles to the bottom of the heavens so they fall asleep. SCOUNDREL, will you dare to ever bite me again? Remember that I am the Monarch's page you roll beneath my hand like a wave beneath my barque oh my wild quail, crushed by my fingers your swell fills me. I TRANSPARENT TRAVELER from the panes of the thicket through the route of the blood brought back to my mouth fingers full of moon and footstep wide awake I hear the evening beating asleep on my bed. II YOUR SOUL is back from the confines of myself prisoner of a sky of idle ways where the night of a thief slept easily in the hollow of a poem beneath the sky of my hand. A ROSE AVALANCHE is dead between our sheets. This muscled rose, this chandelier of the Opera fallen from sleep, black with cries and ferns which the hand of a shepherdess installs around us this rose awakens! Beneath the shrouds of grief rigged by the tale! Vibrant bugles of the sky, wandered by bees appease the clenched brow of my boxer. Shackle the bound body of the sweating rose. So he stays asleep. I want to wrap him in swaddling clothes to know that we are cruel hunters of angels and to make things even darker and stranger among the flowers -- to be at the awakening as my death is mourned with pomp by those twisted serpents and that frightened snow. Oh the voice of beaten gold, aggressive brat let your tears flow on my fingers from your eyes torn out by the beak of a hen pecking here in dream while somewhere else grains are prepared by this light hand open to my thief. YOUR BLUE FEET with branches and stars(1) ran on my shore and leapt in my hand daring that love your laughter unlatches to tread boldly across it with inhuman feet! You awake in me as quickly as the specters in my teeth to haunt the stairwell so swiftly that my solitude must therefore be you Guy, my heart multiplied. but to wander me take off your shoes. End Note 1. "Branches" is slang for the chains of galley slaves. |
SILENCE, il faut veiller
ce soir |