_{^{Photo by BAILEY MAHON on Unsplash}}

[Picking up where I left off posting poems from my back catalogue, here is one from the turn of the millennium.

In the years between 2000 and 2002, my writing took a more personal turn and become far more intense. Much of work I produced during that period still pains me and I am loath to reproduce it here. I retained, however, my connection with the work of Francis Ponge and produced this piece — part translation, part variation on a theme – based on Ponge’s magnificent longer prose-poem titled La Chèvre. Looking back, I would probably now set more assiduously about the task of creating a more faithful translation. This rougher version, however, better reflects my state of mind at the time.]

Fragments of a Nanny-Goat

(After Ponge)

The tenderness we naturally feel for the notion of the nanny-goat

Because she so efficiently produces such aromatic milk from meagre vegetation picked out from around hard stones

Her horns, albeit little, have a sweet pose

Hard-working nurse, distant princess

Made in the image of the galaxies

She kneels down when she needs to rest

and uncrucifies her legs as soon as she is needed

Never neglects her duty

Belles with long eyes, hairy as beasts

Who like the newspaper and tobacco

Bearded with a grave accent

Obsessing the mountain stones

Roped, they somehow rope us in too

by the hair

They work their way up the mountain

They scour it like a careful scholar

A miserable animal

Picking through the miserable vegetables and minerals

of an unblessed mountain landscape

Machines, like ours,

made to extract milk

from the harshest of conditions

A poor pitiful animal

that, nevertheless, we must respect

A prodigious organism

that works. 

Like all creatures,

a mistake,

And like all creatures,

the perfect realization 

of that mistake

Lamentable and admirable

at the same time

Shocking and inspiring

And what of us?

Sure, we are tainted

by our feeble attempts

to express this.

That’s why every day

I throw a nanny-goat down

onto a note-pad

Just as the nanny-goat’s owner throws her out

onto the mountain

among the barren stones

Among the stones of words, from which,

at first sight, you can’t quite

pick her out.

But, if you watch carefully

and patiently,

she’ll move;

and, if you get too close,

she’ll skip away.

You can’t press her too hard

into producing that precious

little perfumed milk

that smells faintly sulfurous,

hellish,

like a spark

furtively stolen from a flint

A smell like that the stars

must have

thrown into the sky

with similar violence

And whose multitude and 

infinite dispersion ferments their various seeds of light

into a milky way

that spreads

ineffably from the sky through us.

Nourishing, still warm

Aah

That milk makes us thirst

but never flatters us

into thinking we matter very much

Unlike the words we suck from other mother’s mouth

is clearly destined

for some more obscure distant regeneration

that lies beyond us. 

                                *

And that’s exactly what the billy-goat meditates about

Magnificent dreamer

Sprouting a tree of ideas from his troubled brow,

Like a fungus feeding on the ressentiment

he feels

for the brief, functional, occasional acts

of love he must offer

Assigned to him by genes.

A thinker with an already loaded gun

embedded in his forehead

For politeness’ sake

expressed in

ornamented, swept back

architectonic curls of horns

Knowing, though, that the real source

of his strength

bubbles convulsively away

between his legs

Dangerously overcharged with love

The heraldry 

that weighs down his head

gives him indigestion.

His ruminant stomach

torn tortuously between destiny and passion.