Fallen Pines

Poems and photography

by

Deborah Joyce

Fallen Pines

I found you

nose in the dirt

bleached bare

a rack of ribs

lifting your true-arrow spine

aspiring to crawl

to a place separate

from that of your birth.

My own feet

will doubtless do no better

than such a pedestrian end.

So let me acknowledge

the messages etched in your core,

subtle changes of wind or rain,

your singular identity

in the uniform forest,

those moments that played with your essence.

Eclipses and swelter,

chinook and blizzard,

they are all written there,

wooden memories.

My inner forest has tales of shade and sun

carving my soul

beneath my bark

coarse cry and cover.

The children of my dreams

have spines of paper

begotten bare on sheets of white.

I stare down at them,

listening for a voice,

and hearing none, cruel mother,

I crush them in my hands.

They do not have your permanence

to share our secrets

with the stars.

Pasta

I assign them to their fate.

Silent, unbending, anonymous.

Thrust upright into the bubbling cauldron.

They stand a few minutes.

I watch their mute surrender

As they bow away under the steam.

Submerging the last unyielding bits,

I am the Kitchen Witch;

Doing nothing

And dreaming of power.

 

I am

a shell

where once

your heartbeat

echoed

I am

a forgotten lake

that rippled

with your passing

I am

earth

that melted

to form your footprints

You are

negated

only traces

and

I am

becoming

singular

  

Bad Habits

Some elements of nature

Do not know their place;

Like untidy blades of grass

Growing in the cracks of sidewalk

And water seeking its own level,

Eroding mountains in its path.

I wish I could make rainbows

Without first making storms.

Not all people grow in rows

Like vegetables in a garden.

We tend to reach for sunlight

Following nature’s course.

Chacunière

Quelques racines de mes espoirs

gisent encore sous la terre de ton jardin,

et tes pénates connaissent

par cœur mes prières.

Ton plafond se teint de la fumée de mes rêves,

où je crayonne mon nom

sur l’écho de ta voix.

Un verre sur la table

porte la trace de ma soif,

et tes livres réclament

la caresse de mes yeux.

Le feu du foyer

projette au mur

mon ombre qui danse et qui hante ta demeure.

Et là-haut, dans ta chambre,

ton lit manque ma chaleur.

Incorporelle,

Je suis la fée folle du logis.

Mon âme sans Toi est sans abri.

Maçonnerie

Tel un tireur d’élite,

ta conscience te guette du toit.

Tu marches félin,

frôlant les murs

voulant faire comme un canin

pour inviter des câlins.

Mais tu crains

te faire descendre

te réduire en cendres

par une foudre du Ciel,

des comptes à rendre.

Tes poumons à peine

remplis de liberté

sous ta veste où pèsent

les secrets

de tes sommeils manqués,

tes chemins ratés,

tu rases les murs de briques

où sont projetés

les ombres de tes doutes

et tu n’adoptes ta démarche de Juste

que sur les voies ensoleillées.

Je t’attends dans l’ombre frais

du passé.

Chandelle fine

qui illumine

les piliers de pierre,

un exil rassurant

du grand vent.

Je te connais…

Et ton cœur

que mon amour

avait fenêtré.

  

Randonnée

Encore aujourd’hui

je suis partie

vivre ma métaphore

dehors.

Méconnaissable

sous un gros anorak,

évitant le trottoir,

force de jambes

plutôt que de tête

visitée à tour de rôle

par les anges et les démons

par soleil et vent

marcheuse solitaire

creusant un chemin

que personne ne prend,

je souille de mes pieds

la neige vierge.

Je dessine mon parcours

en emportant avec chaque pas

un peu de cette vie

collée à mes bottes.

Sunset Walk on Snow

The land sips the sky

dry

of its opaque luminosity

so that Earth

may become a Star

seen from afar

and cold becomes

glow

across the void

to throw

its shining message.

I’m here,

if only a sound

and an impression

on the white reflection

of god.

                  

Innocence Paint

seamless

length and breadth

a healthy January snow

white whipped cream contours

to fill the harsh angles

the more eloquent

the apology

the more opaque

the layers

like a cerement

something smothers within

waiting for forgetfulness

to follow forgiveness

for only then

would this burden

seem less

Death Wish in Paris

The river’s caramel depth

seems unromantically incapable

of drowning unrequited love;

a shallow excuse for oblivion,

her every movement scrupulously observed

by countless would-be poets

and the traffic of infatuated couples

hiding on her bridges,

jeweled tiaras.

No place to lose a lifeless body.

Perhaps the tower’s dramatic demise –

a lovesick leap

off the ultimate phallic symbol.

Yet the wishful step to eternal forgetfulness

ends in public embarrassment

of being scraped off a crowded sidewalk.

I have found the surest anonymity

insured by French custom.

            Walk the street at their pace.

                        Smile at no one.

                                    Pretend you are one of them.

                                                You will cease to exist.

  

Michigan Avenue

Step gently

over the trembling bodies

of the fallen birds,

wings shattered

on cool smooth

panes of artificial sky.

Men in their vanity

lined this canyon

with mirrored towers

forty stories high.

Crawling dust and paper winds

slither after the staccato heels

that flee the blemishing drops

while the skinny exiled outline

of trees in their concrete beds

wave bare arms

in mercy prayers.

Perhaps the sky will deliver them.

Only the fountains

are strangely still.

Heaven holds its breath

before a sob, before

the storm is sent

to teach humility.

Orbits

Seven years I wandered

in a comet’s dream.

You flung me far

out where the echo of our past

energy resounds

and, rolling in its thunder,

the ellipse commands

the flame to its source.

I return to find you dancing

with some cold moon,

feeling hidden in the void.

I always knew my orbit

would come full circle in time

in which I can account

for all the moments

you thought I couldn’t

see you,

hear you,

watch you grow,

breathe

the common air of two birds turning

lost above the tundra.

So this is how ‘never’ feels:

like leaving the traffic

to drive alone through the woods

and ending up in a paved parking lot.

A full white moon in winter

or the secret of where birds go to die.

Cold candle wax

or a vow on the lips of a nun.

The foreign

unpronounceable

notes of your name

leave my head

 in tuneless silence

while I iron white linen

of a man’s shirt

whose proportions

are not yours.

Icon

I would have liked to reproduce you

pantograph and pencil you

mix navies and cerulean

eureka your eyes

I could have drawn you within

high relief

dimensions of you

impressions of you

seeped into my cells

split your atoms

rebirth you

in fresher tones

newborn nudes

refashion you

through artistry

of female chemical idolatry

I could have been your temple

sheltering your image

pagan portrait

of a god

who never left his heaven

The Conquest of Balance

What rules apply

to keep me high

and elegant

astride the stallion of my dreams?

A bit of steel

certainty and heels

dug deep in gravity

are all that attach me

to flight from pedestrian safety

and wed me

to my lofty desire.

Unsettling doubts

would unseat me

surely in a loss of mastery

of my precarious choice

to fly not fall,

if mind chose to matter

over heart –

that clumsy and unbalanced organ

binds me to my disobedience

of natural earthbound law,

neither centered nor centaur born,

aspiring only to marry

the furious muscled ever-forward

motion of my life.

Ellipse

Tu finis souvent tes phrases

en points de suspension,

signe de tes omissions,

style mitraillette

sursis d’exécution

de tes promesses incomplètes.

Tu ponctuais ma vie d’espoirs,

histoire

de me persuader

qu’il y avait suite à donner.

Sans point final,

tes idées planent

comme autant de doutes

pour repeindre tes serments

en mensonges,

les bornes de ma fausse route.

Je ne retiens plus le souffle

en goûtant à ton art

abrégé et ramassé,

ton chemin plus court

pour aller quelque part.

Je saisis maintenant tout le sens

de tes raccourcis,

de tes silences et de tes non-dits.

Lorsque tu parles d’amour sans fin…

je t’aime

point

point

point

Le Second Degré

Many years ago, working on a large in-house translation project, I supplied French translations to a group of programmers who were rebuilding the on-line Billings and Collections program for an American company.  The French I was asked to supply was a simple collection of fields on the screen, such as “Date”, “Time”, “Account number”.  As an indication of just how long ago I worked on this, the main consideration at the time was to convert the program from a text based interface to a GUI or “graphical user interface”, using all the little widgets that we now manipulate almost unconsciously on our computer monitors. They were “the latest thing” back then.

While the programmers had the task of modernizing access to information in two languages, my personal dilemma was coming up with French texts equivalent to the English, but with a crossword puzzle restriction:  only eighty characters per line.  This became a real challenge.

Although I had always had a sense of the quantitative differences between French and English, it was the programming SWAT team who was able to provide confirmation with real statistics.  These computer guys were an elite bunch from IBM, a generation before today’s post-Facebook software geniuses in their hoodies and jeans.  My team all wore suits and ties, removing their suit coats at their desks revealing white shirts, and were groomed like a squad of Marines: no beards or mustaches, and conservative haircuts.  Some of them had, in fact, begun their technical careers in the military.

What I learned from their statistical studies is that the average utterance in French is typically 30% longer than its English equivalent.  The team understood why I anguished over fitting my French translations into 80 characters per line.  Where one line on an English screen could allow for six or seven fields plus the blank spaces to be filled, the programmers kept coming back to me with the same old song:  “Any way to shorten this by a few letters?” 

The classic example is the American “DOB” for “date of birth”.  Three characters.  In French, I remember grappling with “Né le” and then wanting to be politically correct, going to “Né(e) le” in case the person filling out the form was a female.  But then the uncooperative software would leave out my accent mark and turned my rendition into nonsense.  Using “date de naissance” avoided the accent mark issue, but took up too many characters. 

Taking the statistical analysis of the two languages one step further, it also turns out that English has 30% more words than French.  I had always noticed that the English half of my bilingual dictionaries was consistently thicker than the French half.  The hard fact of more paper on one side was enough to prove that there simply are more words in English to be defined.  My Larousse book of French synonyms was visibly half the size of my English synonym finder, and bashfully included a subtitle, in smaller text: “with antonyms included” to beef up the volume and mask the fact that there just isn’t a slew of synonyms to be had in French. 

In practice, the smaller set of French word choices lends itself to the tricky area known as the Second degré.  In a language where one word, rich with underlying context, has several meanings, the Second degré is where the real art of speaking and understanding the French language, with endless plays on words, and subtle changes in tone of voice or a raised eyebrow, becomes the subtle secret handshake between two speakers.

When applied, the “Second degree” means one should not take a word or phrase literally, but look for the humorous aspect, delve into the underlying layers of meaning.  The image it evokes in my mind is a shadowy staircase into a half-lit cellar.  The French language has a second level where you must tread very carefully, or find yourself in that underground place, looking back up at the light outside and wondering how you had innocently stumbled into a completely different conversation.  Once one becomes a real player of the game, the geological exploration into hidden meanings beneath the surface can be the pathway to a few cultural treasures, the keys to really speaking French.

One evening, after a day spent interpreting in a factory for a group of machine operators from France, we were all sitting around having a drink before dinner.  I spent a month working with these men, and was happily accepted by them into their team.  They were already united by a certain camaraderie, cultivated while working together on the project at their home base.  But once they boarded a plane to the United States together, they became a synchronized, close knit soccer team, bound by the shared experience of a first exposure to America.  I was to become not only the technical assistant to accomplishing their work in the American plant, but their own interpretive barometer of cultural differences. 

As I sat with them sipping my sweet vermouth on the rocks, one of the guys complained that he had wanted to iron his shirt for dinner that night, but the ironing board in his room was … substandard. Temporarily dazed by the idea of a Frenchman’s dilemma with a wrinkled shirt, I watched him hunting around for the word in French to describe the problem, and then blurted out what I thought was the correct one.

« Branlante, la planche à repasser était branlante. »

A dead silence came over the room, and I saw all these pairs of eyes latch onto me simultaneously in surprise, as if I had just shouted “Boo!”

The Team Leader was the first to speak, with a flustered shake of his head.  “Exactly!  Yes, Déborah, that is the exact word to describe it!”  He looked around the room.  “She is correct, you know.”

The conversation took a quick turn to something else, and was forgotten as we left for dinner.

Of course, I had to find out what I had said wrong!  Hours later, back in my room, I ran to my dictionary to look up ‘branlant” which did, in fact, translate as “shaky, unsteady, tottering”.  Then I wandered into the basement of the Second degré and looked up the verb branler.   Oh, no!  To masturbate (used in the reflexive, naturally).  There were other phrases using the verb branler that merited two and three warning stars in my bilingual dictionary, none of them very polite expressions.

The next morning at work, after putting on my factory coverall and hairnet in the Ladies’ locker room, I hurried to meet the guys as they came strolling out of the Men’s Locker Room down the hall.

“So, gentlemen, I want to thank you for the vocabulary lesson last night.  I looked up branler in the dictionary.”  I was treated to roars of compassionate laughter.  Overnight, I had become “one of the guys.”  For the duration of the month that I worked with them, I was amazed at how many things in the factory were “shaky” and “unsteady”, how many of the hand tools in the tool boxes were referred to as the “shaky tool”.  I would learn every possible use of the verb in all of its most coquin of renditions. 

If I had to describe that ironing board now, I would cautiously say “elle n’est pas très stable…” 

Not very stable, like the sometimes shaky ground of French context.