Ou est le portail du jour? Our poet today, Timothy Adès, in translating Victor Hugo (1802-1885) descries on high a yawning portal, the holy vision of sleeping Boaz, and on this Day 736 of the Daily Poems renders Hugo in true Oulipo fashion …
From ‘Booz endormi’ by Victor Hugo
Translated by Timothy Adès : no letter E
Comme dormait Jacob, comme dormait Judith,
Booz, les yeux fermés, gisait sous la feuillée ;
Or, la porte du ciel s’étant entre-bâillée
Au-dessus de sa tête, un songe en descendit.
…Jacob lay still, and Judith; Boaz too
Blind and oblivious in his arbour lay.
Now from on high, a yawning portal through,
To him a holy vision found its way.
~ It was a vision of a vast oak, going
Up from his loins towards a cobalt sky,
And, link by link, a clan, a nation growing:
A king who sang; a dying god, hung high.
~ Said Boaz, in his spirit murmuring,
“Forty on forty birthdays, Lord! I pil’d;
How shall all this from my old body spring?
I cannot boast a consort, nor a child.
~ “Thou know’st that long ago my faithful fair,
Lord God Almighty, quit my couch for yours.
Twin souls conjoint, a still-commingling pair,
Gliding in convoy through oblivion’s doors.
~ ‘That I should found a family? How so?
How should my loins now bring a brood to birth?
For in our youth triumphant mornings glow,
And, out of night, day springs victorious forth;
~ “But I am shaky as a birch in snow,
A widow-man, on whom long shadows sink.
Towards my tomb my soul is winging low,
Just as a thirsty ox stoops down to drink.”
~ All this in mystic vision Boaz said,
Turning to God his drowsy orbs, all calm;
Nor thought a woman at his foot was laid.
So daisy blows, unmark’d by lofty palm. …
Victor Hugo
Translated by Timothy Adès