BEATUS ILLE QUI (en anglais)

Beatus Ille Qui
(Happy The One Who..)

For Mario Quintana

I thirst for you
On this evening like lilac foam,
My constant friends:
Pink hyacinths, everyday things,
Blue words on bright purple lips
Like Quintana’s poems.

I feel nostalgic for Muscat wines,
Beaume-de-Venise,
I want scents:
Strawberry, vanilla, coriander,
Blue tits leaving the ground
Before even touching the sky.

I turn my gaze away
From sentences that are tangled up, jammed together, shut in,
From displays of wit that are ironic, cynical, cutting.

I, the simple scribe initiated
Into the ancient splendours of language
By the mystical Celtic knots
Of a humble and sweet solitude
Like the silk of idle hours
And the velvet of two eyes
Closing over the all-consuming fire of a tear.

Beatus ille qui procul negotiis...*

Translated from the French of Athanase Vantchev de Thracy by Norton Hodges 15.03.12.