John Knowles
Two translations after Mallarmé
'une dentelle s'abolit’
(i)
The supreme play of doubt denies
a lace that opens, nonetheless,
with such shocking incorrectness
on this space, where a bed never lies,
the blank contradiction of a drape
with its mirror, in its flight
against the empty glass, a white
veil, it rides up, but cannot escape.
Yet in the currency of dreams,
somewhere, a lute in quiet despair,
hollowed out of nothing, would live,
that from its belly, as it leans
against a window, it would give
birth to you, the solitary heir.
(ii)
Cleared of its furniture,
the light seems somehow new
in our unused third bedroom.
The curtains,
in their sheer white, bow out
to its emptiness,
ride up against the window
as the door is opened.
The guitar
left out in the move
is propped against the wall
unplayed;
the bare room
with its unstripped boards,
its echoes and resonances,
still waits for its birth.
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