Will Dockery
2019-09-08 19:59:02 UTC
Bird Cage, by Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau
I am a bird cage
A bone cage
With a bird
The bird in my bone cage
Is death making its nest
When nothing is happening
I hear its wings ruffling
And when I've laughed a lot
If I suddenly stop
I hear it chirping
Deep down
Like a tiny alarm
It is a bird held captive
Death in my bone cage
Wouldn't it like to fly away
Is it you who makes it stay
Or is it me
I can't say
It cannot leave until
Having eaten all
My heart
The blood source
With the life inside
It will have my soul in its beak.
http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.ca/2010/03/bird-cage-hector-de-saint-denys-garneau.html
Okay, so I think it is indeed Hector who got the translations.I am a bird cage
A bone cage
With a bird
The bird in my bone cage
Is death making its nest
When nothing is happening
I hear its wings ruffling
And when I've laughed a lot
If I suddenly stop
I hear it chirping
Deep down
Like a tiny alarm
It is a bird held captive
Death in my bone cage
Wouldn't it like to fly away
Is it you who makes it stay
Or is it me
I can't say
It cannot leave until
Having eaten all
My heart
The blood source
With the life inside
It will have my soul in its beak.
http://gdancesbetty.blogspot.ca/2010/03/bird-cage-hector-de-saint-denys-garneau.html
"Hector de Saint-Denys Garneau (1912-1943) is considered the first modernist
poet in Quebec. His poetry feeds on landscapes of his country in order to
connect the poet to the universal themes of the unknown and death. The poems
show the duality of the man through the look that the child-poet takes on
distressing images: birds that escape, forest fires, images exacerbated by
the opaque transparency of poetic language..."
https://www.poetryinvoice.com/node/2050
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I had mostly forgotten this one...