Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

What Was It

2010; University of Wisconsin Press; Volume: 39; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/sub.2010.0003

1527-2095

Pierre Alféri, Kate Lermitte Campbell,

What Was It Translated by Pierre Alferi (bio) and Kate Lermitte Campbell1 (bio) Allegria What is this impulseIt’s an annihilating movementBut it’s alsoJoy stripped of content. What is this impulse that sends you hurtling down The stairs, missing out the steps of regular breath When breathing in “hee”, breathing out “haw” until you reach the springboard Street? – Note that I’m not asking Where that step comes from too light For anything to be placed on it, not even a question. I’d like to name it in memory of a rather offbeat Dialogue in which words got carried off with The sheets of the block where they’d been neatly aligned Knocked over by a gust of wind. – Out Of our sight! words incapable Of containing the pathos-less emotion of the wind: The wind because what exactly were we talking about Wielding neologisms and heavier periphrases To capture finer nuances? – Of nothing at all That’s the point. Oh well it’s the same today If I ask you what you’re thinking of, you cling on Intent to run the length of an endless spiral To whatever rail, thick presence, central pillar, anything That prevents life going off course: certainty here And now or subject of conversation. – Nothing! Anyhow it was enough to ask the question As you drop a sheet before the blades at the end [End Page 24] Of a line to see if it’ll take off at the beginning Of the next. – At the moment you rebound From the pavement following the last step You’re no more than a photogram and the landscape with you Frozen by the pause button on the videotape player But one that doesn’t want to stop, trembles like a leaf Or a trapped rodent struggling to rejoin Its fellows. The image too wants to enter into the dance Of images/second. What is this impulse that Outmodes all deposits, parked cars Buildings unharmed by the night’s bombardments And waking resolutions? From any point of view, Whether exterior hidden in the landscape Crossed abolished as a sniper keeps his gun trained on you To avenge the universe to which you’re directing this dirty trick Or inside, your vision stripped of its reference points, It’s an annihilating movement, climb and abject fall An inextinguishable thirst, a repeated call For sacrifice (and I add to this on purpose), it accelerates Devastation. – But it’s also Just the opposite this one-way trip That nothing can justify. Not a pleasure For it gets you nothing and each moment deprives you Of the spectacle wrapped into the rear-view mirror Gaze fixed on the stub of road lunging At you. Joy stripped of content: The visible idea of dance in the mirror That has consumed the wall behind the projectors emptying The floor of its dancers in training too concerned About where their right foot is (upbeat) and their left At the back and to the side (downbeat) to admire their own Twirls. Gone for good like you Parisians of a long-exposed photo by Atget Speeding did they at least experience orgasm In a sneeze? – The stroboscope resuscitates them As dancers, fugitives, ghosts caught on the run Time enough to recognise them as brothers in arms Then we’ll have to pick up other combustible images Burn the furniture until we find the explosive Dose of absence, joy and movement. [End Page 25] Parallel Lives Panes of glass slide one over the otherSlices of lifeThe exponential treeOf a novel-in-which-you’re-not-the-heroPaths that are corridorsNot to choose betweenBorrowed identitiesLike dromomaniacsPassing from one line to anotherEvery action triggers a parallel life. It’s a necklace of coloured pearls The more you add, of course, the less easily you make out The thread but the child can’t get over it Hanging from the lady’s neck The sky forms two panels That lean towards the summit of the portico And curved Earth a launch- Pad. He laughs As though demented at the game Of continuity and discontinuity Two points...