Today, Day 549 of the daily poems, our distinguished translator-poet Timothy Adès recalls the poetry of Jean Cassou (1897-1986). Cassou is, undeservedly, not well known even in France. An important poet, he was an active member of the French resistance. While incarcerated in a Vichy prison he wrote his ’33 Sonnets composés au secret’ in the dark and then committed to memory. Sebastian Hayes (Poetry in Translation, April 2010) writes: “We should all be grateful to Timothy Adèsfor bringing this remarkable human document and notable piece of literature to the non-French reading public.” And here is ‘Summer’ – a sonnet translated by Timothy Adès.
Summer
by Jean Cassou 1897-1986
translated from French by Timothy Adès
Summer, summer, the horserace in the hot night,
a woman’s body under the mosquito-net,
breathing the street after the ecstatic concert,
then the forays in the sweat of alcohol,
all the days of youth buried under tropical foliage,
under the sand driven by a furnace wind,
and never again shall we shimmy by lantern-light,
you remember, my youth?
the shimmy, a street dance in July,
and the future in your arms like a fireball,
you remember that old future? it went bad,
a rusty apple, a heart cracking in your fingers,
summer, deep summer, its fearsome contralto voice,
summer, for what?
Jean Cassou
translated by Timothy Adès
Published in Jean Cassou, 33 Sonnets of the Resistance and other poems, from Arc Publications (2002)