"Every Breath," Claire Malroux

Every Breath

Every breath (I lied to myself)
in my own breath every flower
will sharpen my eyes every ocean
will wander in my blood
and struggling skin on skin against the specter
of the wind life always grew green again
tangled in death's curls but what
memory hovered of fields and of bison

Claire Malroux

Translated by Marilyn Hacker

Yvonne Caroutch

When we are like


When we are like
two drunken suns
in the silence of figs
when moist night settles over
dead distant towns
when we hear the thick cry
of seeds buried
beneath layers of earth
we will build a great fire of mint
to announce the marriage
of the rivers' dark soul
with our endless thirst

Yvonne Caroutch



With your fingers of salt and light

With your fingers of salt and light, you raise
the sawn of m thigh. between the house and
the well appears the fragile eye of hope, like a
bolt of lightning at the corner of the roof. The
walls bow down in the silence, as if the sea within
us took back its floor. Solitude batters objects
and clothes them with a skin of inner being.
Words return to the dawn of rock like a river
patiently flowing bak to the sources of death.

Yvonne Carutch

If you like these poems pleasure consider availing yourself of a fine and overlooked volume of Modern French Women Poets.

The Peaceful Sleeper by Marie-Francoise Prager

The Peaceful Sleeper

An angel watches over the beast,
to become one with the night
for a perfect crime,
to leep dreamlessly
a body must disappear.

I swim among the fibers of my trances
I expand my limits.

Marie-Francoise Prager

Andree Chedid

Andrée Chedid is a poet and novelist, born in 1920 in Cairo from Lebanese parents. When she was ten, she was sent to a boarding house, where she learned English and French. At fourteen, she left for Europe. She then returned to Cairo to go to an American university. Her dream was to become a dancer. She got married to a physician when she was twenty-two, with whom she has two children: Louis and Michèle. Her work questions human condition and what links the individual to the world. Her writing seeks to evoke the Orient, but she focuses more in denouncing the civil war that destroys Lebanon. She lives in France since 1946. Because of this diverse background, her work is truly multicultural. French is her native language and her choice for her writings. However, her first book was written in English: On the Trails of my Fancy. She has commented about her work that it is an eternal quest for humanity.


The Final Poem

A forge burns in my heart.
I am redder than dawn,
Deeper than seaweed,
More distant than gulls,
More hollow than wells.
But I only give birth
To seeds and to shells.

My tongue becomes tangled in words:
I no longer speak white,
Nor utter black,
Nor whisper gray of a wind-worn cliff,
Barely do I glimpse a swallow,
A shadow's brief glimmer,
Or guess at an iris.

Where are the words,
The undying fire,
The final poem?
The source of life?

by Andree Chedid


Biography from: Wikipedia.org

poetry of Amina Said

The Earth

carried sky first
born from a longing for light
the bird carried his cry

the holy stones
borrowed their form
from the sun the moon

and still the earth
carried the sky first

then came man
his extreme distress

around his cry
the matrix of silence
as his look more than anywhere
death

Amina Said

translated by Mary Ann Caws

eternity in the poetry of Claude De Burine said, Princess Haiku

But When I Have

But when I have closed my eyes
When you lie beneath the violets
Or brambles like me
When the clouds above us
Will take shape and crumble like us,
Who will speak for us?
Who will say: "You, your eyes
Are the color of dreaming
And young slates
Which tile the Springs of rains.

And you: Your skin is the thrush singing
Your hands my warmth
And summer's fever
Which bears your name."

Times goes where it will
Puts down its costume of jonquils
And water where it will,
We have nothing more
Than a butterfly wing drying
Against night's windows.
We are nothing more than a dust
Inside the avid lips of the wind.
Only language
Is lasting bronze.


Claude De Burine

translated by Martin Sorrell


The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry, edited by Mary Ann Caws

"Following in the tradition of the Surrealists, de Burine's poetry and several essays employ impassioned metaphor and an effusion of imagery to illustrate the joys and sorrows of human existence."


If you are looking for more of her poetry: "Words Have Frozen Over" is available at Abe Books.

"de Burine's poetry is built almost entirely on imagery, where metaphor is poetic structure, and the freedom of the vision itself becomes a source of meaning. The legacy of the Surrealists is immediately apparent." Susan Wicks -

a pale blush of Spring said, Princess Haiku

It's a beautiful morning in the San Francisco Bay Area. I was awakened by sunlight spilling into my eyes and must be up and out to enjoy the day. I was reading a French poet, Claude de Burine earlier who one said that one of her poetic missions was to "bring back the moonlight into poetry." -Yes moonlight and sunshine! Off with my flower basket to collect gold.