[et viennent les lieux arbores d’euphorbes]*

et viennent les lieux arborés d’euphorbesti-baumes campêches et fruits à painqui ont différé nos dèchesâmes véritables au nid de leur puretéles ortolans querelleurs les galops de toutes robesbêtes en suspensqui un instant retiennent leur chuteles savanes comme sorties de moimais il reste ce bruit de merles rêves étendus dans l’herbe et le frissonjadis touffeur sous les feuilles d’amandieret les chants des Viejos s’élèventvieux congosrevenus de Cuba par décretavec les miasmes de tabacles averses de rhum dans les ramuresqu’un vent léger disperseles voilà revenus sur des alezansétourdis d’émotion

• [then come the places shaded by euphorbia]
• Joël Des Rosiers (bio)
  Translated by Carrol F. Coates (bio)

then come the places shaded by euphorbiamint campeachy and breadfruitwhich have delayed our debtstrue souls in the nest of their purityquarrelsome ortolans gallopades with flowing robesbeasts in suspensionwho for an instant avoid their fallsavannahs¹ as if coming from mebut there remains that sea murmurdreams extended in the grass and the shiveronce shivering beneath the leaves of the almond treeand the chants of the Viejos² ring outold congos³returning from Cuba by edictwith miasma of tobaccoshowers of rum in the foliagewafted by a light breezethere they come on sorrelsshaking with emotion

Joël Des Rosiers

Joël Des Rosiers, born in Haiti, is a poet and psychiatrist in Quebec, where he has lived since he was ten years old. His books of poems include Métropolis Opéra, Tribu (finalist of the Prix du Gouverneur general), Savanes (winner of Prix d’excellence de Laval), Vétiver, Caïques, and Gaïac. Winner of the Grand Prix of Montreal Book and the Grand Prix of International Poetry Festival, Vétiver has been translated into English by Hug Haelton and published in 2005 by Signature Editions in Winnipeg, and won the Governor General’s Award. In 2011, his literary publications garnered for him the Prix Athamase-David, Quebec’s most prestigious literary prize. His Théories Caraïbes, Poétique du déracinement, a critical monograph, was revised in 2009 and awarded the Prix de la Société des écrivains canadiens.

Carrol F. Coates

Carrol F. Coates, Professor Emeritus of French, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics at Binghamton University (SUNY), has published a number of translations of Caribbean and African literature, including General Sun, My Brother (Jacques Stephen Alexis) and Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals (Ahmadou Kourouma), both published in the series CARAF Books (University of Virginia Press), of which he is the former series editor. He teaches courses in nineteenth century French poetry, La Fontaine’s Fables, Haitian and African literature in French, and advanced grammar and stylistic analysis, and is currently researching the structuration of sound patterns and versification in the Russian fables of Ivan Andreyevich Krylov.

Footnotes

1. Des Rosiers published a volume of poetry entitled Savannes in 1993.

2. In the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, a viejo (old, old man) is a companion, often among the cutters of sugarcane.

3. “Congo” = black men from the Congo (i.e., Africa).

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