Sand Stars

Translated from French by Charles Rice-Davis

Only a light breeze would’ve broken through.

In the afternoon, foams mingle,

His half-immersed face reads

The grains, obsidian or quartz, edges smoothed

—Gold or white, blood or rose, orange, bright black— 

Covered then abandoned by the clear water

Which withdraws its rounded arms far beyond.

To the left, the sun forgets its shadow.

Brow on his wrists, he watches the sand stars.

Innumerable, they form slim and concentric

Garlands, and brighter still,

Leave the comet’s core,

Following the wake of blonde lashes fanned out in flight.

The water returns without jeering wrinklets,

Like the timid smile with trembling nostrils

Of children, even the very youngest.

That timid pout, too, a scowl softens

And recedes, a light, fleeting envelope.

The stars crackle, glisten, disappear,

Wavelets return, and only shine

If the clear film should suffice.

The infinitely small survives, dulled, when the water withdraws.

Blurred constellations in the wet sand,

Curling up, labyrinth wavering,

Smudged out, rebuilt in the next wave, 

All while, peacefully, his spine roasts.

Who is each glimmer of crystal burning the sand?

Soul of stone, salt or water?

An ectoplasm, amoeba, or illusion?

Eyes closed, eyes open, repositioning his head,

Diving into the beach’s firmament.

Maybe he should’ve brushed down the little loops

Lying numb on his terry-cloth robe. He is naked.

François Thiéry-Mourelet is the General Secretary of the Société des Gens de Lettres, France’s association of authors. A former reporter and a seasoned sailor, he has published numerous novels and plays. His poetry collection, Brise dans le miroir / [Brise in the Mirror] (Sans Escale, 2022), from which this issue’s translated poem is extracted, is a decades-long composition of 89 cantos, received the Prix Jeanne Marvig.

Charles Rice-Davis published the first English-language translation of Haitian poet Coutechève Lavoie Aupont, winner of the Prix René Philoctève and Prix Dominique Batraville. He has also translated uncollected poems by Mário de Sá-Carneiro and Nguyễn Trọng Hiệp’s Paris, capitale de la France / 大法國玻璃都城襍詠. He teaches in the programmes of French and Intercultural Communication at Victoria University of Wellington / Te Herenga Waka.