SUNSPOTS
The people have filled the city’s open spaces,
they stand shoulder to shoulder, expecting everything.
The platform above the Square is empty.
A buzz of unease caresses the bare heads,
their coronas of hair thinning into the breeze;
see the rolled-up newspapers, the scarves that twitch.
The hum mounts to a whisper, the whisper
delivers its secret, the secret
is betrayed, spreads like an epidemic;
outside the city they are building a pyramid of books.
GALATEA
It’s worst when he lugs me to his bed at night:
The soft clammy flesh, the sweaty fumbling,
Those flabby encroachments. Yet the eyes haunt me.
‘Oh, hold me, hold me!’ he whimpers, pathetically,
Though he knows my paralysis – all I can do
Is gape unblinking at the stony ceiling.
Afterwards he’ll always caress me lovingly,
Polish my thigh with a garland of tissues,
Then dwindle to a snore. I slip the blankets
And stand in the rain. Stand there imagining skin.
Original poems from Infinite City (Five Islands Press, 1999)
Jacques Rancourt was born in Quebec in 1946 and has lived in Paris since 1971. A PhD in French Literature from La Sorbonne, he has published some twenty books of poetry and artist books, essays and anthologies of contemporary poetry plus translations from English and Spanish. Since the beginning of the eighties, he has been director of the Festival Franco-Anglais de Poésie and of the magazine
La Traductière. A wide choice of his poems 1974-2008 was published in 2010 under the title
Veilleur sans sommeil (preface by Henri Meschonnic, co-edited by Le Noroît in Montreal and Le Temps des Cerises in Paris). He's done extensive translations from English, including
The Distribution of Bodies and
Gravitations, by John F. Deane,
Les Pièces du Paysage/The Landscape Pieces, by Susan Wicks and
Sculptures sur Prose/Prose Sculptures, by Jan Owen.
Alex Skovron is the author of seven collections of poetry, a prose novella and a book of short stories. His most recent collection is
Letters from the Periphery (2021); his earlier volume of new and selected poems,
Towards the Equator (2014), was shortlisted in the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards. Alex’s work has been translated into a number of languages. His collection of stories
The Man who Took to his Bed (2017), and his novella
The Poet (2005), have both appeared in Czech translations. In 2023 he was honoured with the Patrick White Literary Award for his contribution to Australian literature.
