Close to the river

Dimanche 28 septembre 2008

Jane Birkin par Jean-Loup Sieff - 1968

En ce moment j’écoute beaucoup Jane Birkin, que j’adore. Je ne sais pas pourquoi j’ai cette envie… J’aime beaucoup ce poème d’Anno, c’est toujours avec beaucoup d’émotion que je l’écoute…

The Tower walls at midnight burn,
With fraught desire - the rocks beneath,
Are shoped and wet with fictitious blood.
Someone leaps. The other turns.
But who is who.
(and who are you?)
Forget what you want, but
Don't forget the link that grew me.
That travels deeply,
Through me in the form of every thought that I think.
The loathing and the love,
Bubbling together at the
Brink of my emotion and
This commotion started long before my face
Was ever etched into the wall of time.
I have both your madnesses inside.
I am in constant disagreement with myself.
But I cannot leave me.
You both cannot leave me,
nor one another. Believe me.
I am the ring that won't slip off with soap.
The armies have broken inside me,
and now they stand poised and opposed.
Now there is blood.
Now there is love standing
covered in glory,
and honour lies covered in mud.
You and I, Ma, we built too close
to the river.
Look at us washing our minds free of fever,
Brushing off bird shit
and bad dreams forever,
And never once turning the tide.
Thank you for pains and concerns that have
Made me in turn more unhappy and kind.
I am proud to remind them of you.