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Poetry

“I recall that things were pretty much”

Robert Marteau

Malcolm Greenlee Farley (translator)

I recall that things were pretty much 
as they always were: a horse was hauling 
the baker’s four-wheeled cart; you could still see 
a spray of flowers on my Aunt Alida’s roof 
after the wedding of Amadeus and Christiane. 
From the neighboring forest, a rutting roebuck snarled, 
making the village dogs perk up their ears.  
It’s from this same forest that the turtledoves’ song
also reached us. The titmice were picking the orchard
clean where little pears hung down under tufts
of leaves. Hornets and wasps sucked the plums
beneath the even-tempered, August sun.
We’d put our best clothes on, our fancy 
oxfords. We chatted about the coming grape harvest.

(Forêt de Mouchy: Friday, August 24, 1990)
Wavy lines denoting a space break.
Je me souviens que les choses allaient leur train.
Un cheval tirait la charrette à quatre roues
Du boulanger.  On voyait encore un bouquet
Sur le toit de ma tante Alida en raison
Des noces qui avait eu lieu entre Amédée
Et Christiane.  Du canton proche un chevreuil
En rut rauquait alertant l’oreille des chiens.
C’est de là que nous parvenait aussi le chant
Des tourterelles.  Les mésanges épouillaient
Le verger où les poirillons pendaient aux touffes
De feuilles.  Les frelons et les guêpes suçaient
Les prunes sous le soleil équanime d’août
Nous avions mis nos beaux costumes, nos souliers
Richelieu. Nous causions des prochaines vendanges.

(Forêt de Mouchy, vendredi 24 août 1990.)

Malcolm Greenlee Farley

A transplant to Long Island, Malcolm Greenlee Farley is a poet, cultural journalist, and translator. His poems have appeared in many journals including Agni, The Paris Review, The New Republic, and Raritan. He has just completed a book of his own poetry entitled Wissahickon Formation. His reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The American Poetry Review, The American Psychoanalyst, and The Boston Review. In addition, he has won residencies at MacDowell, the Writers’ Institute at the City University of New York, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center.

Poetry

  • “The willow herb at the wood’s edge clothes itself”

  • “I recall that things were pretty much”

    • Robert Marteau

    French poet, novelist, translator, and essayist, Robert Marteau was born in 1925 and died in 2011. While his work celebrates France, the French landscape and French history and culture, he also lived in Canada for more than a decade. His work garnered many awards, including the Charles Vildrac Prize, two prestigious prizes for poetry from the Académie Française, the Poitou-Charentes Book Prize for his novel In The Grass, and the Mallarmé Prize for his book of poetry, Ordinary Time. In 1979, Princeton University Press published, Salamander, a selection of his poetry in English translation.

    Poetry

  • “The willow herb at the wood’s edge clothes itself”

  • “I recall that things were pretty much”

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