13

by Albane Gellé

les chiens se contenteraient des caresses

des hommes mais les hommes préfèrent

caresser les femmes les chiens sont mal-

heureux d’avoir une vie de chien et les

hommes ne se contentent pas des caresses

des femmes des vieillards disent le temps

passe si vite des enfants disent le monde

est mal fait des femmes pleurent dans le

monde elles se demandent est-il si grand

le fossé entre un homme et une femme les

chiens restent à la porte

13

by Albane Gellé

the dogs content themselves with caresses

from men but the men prefer

to caress women the dogs are un-

happy to have the life of a dog and the

men are not content with the caresses

of women some old men say time

passes so quickly some children say the world

is badly made some women cry in the

world they ask is it so big

the crevice between a man and a woman the

dogs remain at the door

translated from French by Darren Jackson

Albane Gellé was born in 1971 in Guérande (Loire-Atlantique) and lives in Saumur (Maine et Loire) where until 2012 she directed the association “La Maison des Littératures” (formerly “Littérature & Poétiques”), which she created in 2006 with Patric Cahuzac. She has published about 15 books of poetry, with Le Dé Bleu, Inventaire/Invention, and Le Chat qui Tousse, and, recently: Nous valsons (éditions Potentille, 2012) – Si je suis de ce monde (éditions Cheyne, 2012) – Bougé(e) (éditions du Seuil, 2009) - Je, cheval (éditions Jacques Brémond, 2007).

Darren Jackson’s poems have appeared in The Pinch, Smartish Pace, Iron Horse, Cimarron Review, and other journals. A doctoral candidate at the University of Tennessee, he has been a VCCA Fellow in France and Virginia. He has translated Life in the Folds by Henri Michaux, and “The White Globe,” an essay by Bertrand Westphal, which is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press in the The Planetary Turn: Art, Dialogue, and Geoaesthetics in the 21st-Century. He also collaborated with Marilyn Kallet and J. Bradford Anderson on the translation of Chantal Bizzini’s Disaffected.