Vite

by Pierre Peuchmaurd

Arrête avec tes aigles
Les aigles de tes seins

Et tes autres rapaces

Les grands-ducs de tes fesses

Le gypaète de ton sexe

Le vautour de mon foie

Arrête, amour, arrête

Je ne te connaissais pas

Le jour où j’ai vu sur la Loire

Ces longs échassiers noirs

Je tenais la lumière

De chaque côté de moi

La nuit allait tomber

Je croyais me tenir

Je ne te connaissais pas

Je ne sentais pas le sang

Avancer sa vague blanche

Et puis tu m’as jeté

Ton visage au visage

Tes aigles dans les mains

Tes fesses de grande-duchesse

Tu m’as jeté, alouette,

Sur ton miroir

Et les longs échassiers

Les très longs échassiers

Ce soir il neige

Et les oiseaux sont bleus

Petits cadavres, os sous la dent

J’aime tes dents

Je tiens ma tête

Entre tes mains

Hurry

by Pierre Peuchmaurd

Stop it with your eagles

The eagles of your breasts

And your other birds of prey

The eagle owls of your buttocks

The bearded vulture of your cunt

The vulture of my liver

Stop it, Love, stop it

I didn’t know you then

That day when I saw on the Loire River

Those long black wading birds

I was holding the light

On either side of me

Night was about to fall

I thought I was holding it together

I didn’t know you then

I didn’t feel the blood

Pushing its white wave forward

But then you threw

Your face at my face

Your eagles into my hands

Your eagle owl buttocks

You threw me, Lark,

Against your mirror

And those long wading birds

Those very long wading birds

Tonight it is snowing

And all the birds are blue

Small corpses, cutting their teeth

I love your teeth

I am holding my head

Inside your hands

translated from French by E.C. Belli

Pierre Peuchmaurd (1948–2009) was born in Paris, and became fascinated with surrealism in his teenage years. Though his poetry came to transcend the boundaries of surrealist work—by being both more lyrical and inhabited by more substantial narratives—he never forgot the movement and the artists that first inspired him. The Nothing Bird is the first collection of his work in English.

E.C. Belli is a poet and translator. Her translation of a selected volume of poems by late French poet Pierre Peuchmaurd, The Nothing Bird, was recently released by Oberlin College Press (2013). She is the author of Plein Jeu (winner of Accents Publishing’s 2010 Poetry Chapbook Contest) and an editor at Argos Books. She is the recipient of a 2010 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans.