[Sortant d’une page blanche]

by Alain Lance

Sortant d’une page blanche un faux

Marchand de poules m’offre des bocks

Des cigares quand le papier des

Figures est mâché de boulevards

Le bout de la grève vient naviguer

Entre le musée de cire et le

Festin nappé d’une crème austère

L’organiste de la transparence

Met en scène le ramage à brouiller

Goutte à goutte un géant pétrolier

Dans le noir bleuissant vers la foule

Temps criblé, éditions Obsidiane et Le temps qu’il fait, collection Les Analectes, 2000.

[Leaping from a blank page]

by Alain Lance

Leaping from a blank page a false

Chicken seller offers me a mug of beer

A cigar when a chain of cutout

Figures is paper-mâchéd down the boulevard

The end of the strike threads its way

Between the wax museum and the

Feast tableclothed in an austere cream

The organist of transparency

Performs a birdsong to muddle

Drop by drop a giant oil tanker

In the blueing black toward the crowd

translated from French by Erika Luckert

Alain Lance is a French poet and translator from the German. Born in Normandy in 1939, he studied German in Paris and Leipzig. He has published ten books of poetry, earning accolades such as the Tristan Tzara Prize (1996) and the Prix Apollinaire (2001). He has taught French in Iran, and German in Paris, and has also been the director of multiple French cultural institutes in Germany. He has published translations of poetry, prose, and plays from German authors Christa Wolf, Volker Braun, and Ingo Schulze, receiving honours such as the DekaBank Prize of Literaturhaus Frankfurt (2006) and the Eugen Helmlé prize (2012). Lance has also edited several anthologies of French, Iranian, and Hungarian poetry.

Erika Luckert is a poet and translator from the French. Born in Edmonton, she completed a BA in English and Creative Writing at the University of Alberta before moving to New York City to pursue her MFA in Poetry at Columbia University. Erika was a nominee for the Canadian National Magazine Award in Poetry, and her work has been featured or is forthcoming in Denver Quarterly, Room Magazine, carte blanche, The Belleville Park Pages, The Prairie Journal, Glass Buffalo, and others. www.erikaluckert.com.