Time present enters an absence emptied of time just as the illegal "immigrant" into a state of invisibility, his passport confiscated by guards who examine his status under barbed-wire scrutiny...
Translation of Eric Mottram's TIME SIGHT UNSEEN, Part 4 by T Wignesan
Translation of Eric Mottram's TIME SIGHT UNSEEN - Part Four by T. Wignesan
"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis, and an awareness of the imaginative possibilities of relationship between particles".
Eric Mottram.
December 29, 1924 - January 17, 1995, prolific poet, editor of the Poetry Review (organ of The Poetry Society in England during the seventies), eminent critic (Times Literary Supplement) and Emeritus Professor of English and American Literature at King's College, University of London in 1990. He won a scholarship from Blackpool Grammar School to Cambridge, but chose to join the Royal Navy in 1943. He obtained a Double First in English Tripos (1947-1950) at Pembroke College, University of Cambridge, after serving out the War as second-in-command of a mine-sweeper in the Baltic and the Bay of Bengal.
Just for the anecdote, his family traces its descent from the times of the Norman Conquest as " Lords of the Manor " on his father's side. His father was a civil servant who worked to put in place Britain's social security system. Once in 1964, Eric showed me - somewhat diffidently - the family's Coat of Arms, saying : " Do you know what this is ? ", and I never (for a while) stopped kidding him about it all. The real reason why he didn't take up the posts offered to him in the States - such as a professorship at Rutgers - was that he was very proud of being " British " ; yet he owed his post at London University to an American : Professor Robert Earnest SPILLER who authored The Literary History of the United States (1948).
The following translation is the fourth part of "Time Sight Unseen", published in The Poetry/Rare Books Collection, State University of New York at Buffalo, 1993, n.p.
4
les lois tendues vous r้alisiez
furent enseign้es
le droit civil
..เ pr้sent reste intense
cette machine menti
เ pr้sent son temps pr้sent
entre dans une absence vid้e du temps
o๙ m๊me vos poux
.disparaissaient en tombant
.sans ๊tre aliment้s Umheimlicher
les muscles se lassent
.r้apparaissent maniaque sur des roches
.la mar้e mise เ nu
.les colonies renferm้es
.bleu noirci et noir
.coups de froid coloniaux
les m๊mes groupes
.des bernaches moules an้mones de mer
.aspir้s aux roches
.attendent les lois de la lune pour couvrir
.leurs voies a้riennes minces avec l'oc้an
faites sortir la chair en forme de H
.laissant en dehors
.sa volont้
du physique au mental
.le vieux ce
.habitu้ เ
c'้tait habitu้ เ la pens้e
.mais jamais utilisa le mot
.เ l'exception pour
j'ai pens้ que vous saviez
.ou
.je ne jamais pens้ que vous voudriez
arriva du reste un dealer int้ress้
.maintenant le transformateur s'arr๊te
.son affaire devenu loi
reste immobile
.o๙ il oeuvra sans relโche
.aux int้r๊ts m้rit้s tant qu'ils augmentaient
uniquement au plan partiel
.un portail sans affiches les gardiens d้pourvus de la parole
.tout pareil le langage silencieux
l่ches bottes dissimul้s derri่re eux
.passent par le portail en pr้sentant des documents
.sans un mot เ travers
เ une main de verre dans du cuir
.faisant la lecture เ travers des verres du soleil
l'invisibilit้ du passeport
.eux ils ne l'en rendront pas
.la r้sidence serait-elle un ้tat si d้nud้
une fois franchi les fronti่res
.sans ces lampes blanches perch้es en haut
.la hutte dans l'ombre
regardez fixement en penchant
.au dessus de la barri่re du fil m้tallique
.qu'est-ce qu'il y a dans le cartable
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