Paying Poetic Homage to Life

Nikolai Pavlovich Ulyanov, "Potrait of Pushkin"

Nikolai Pavlovich Ulyanov, “Potrait of Pushkin”

At the moment I am helping my mother take care of my 90-year-old father (to be precise, he’ll turn 90 on June 13), and he has just turned me on to this wonderful poem by Jules Supervielle, a French poet I have never heard of. That my father has mentioned the poem at this point in his life has particular significance since it is about a man looking back at his past.

Like the poet, I can say that my father has lived his time with a ceaseless heart, that he created a living home, and that he grasped the world as one does “an apple in a little garden.”  He loves “the earth, the sun, and the moon,” he commits the world to memory, and his unorthodox light verse may be akin to choosing “the least beautiful” of the words that dance in his head. Like the poet, he has approached them in a way that honors their soul before locking them up in poetry.

The passage about growing old hits particularly hard:

It is beautiful to have known
The shade under the leaves,
And to have felt age
Creep over the naked body . . .

Here’s the poem in its entirety as translated by poet Kenneth Rexroth. It is followed by the original French version

Homage to Life 

It’s good to have chosen
A living home
And housed time
In a ceaseless heart
And seen my hands
Alight on the world,
As on an apple
In a little garden,
To have loved the earth,
The moon and the sun
Like old friends
Who have no equals,
And to have committed
The world to memory
Like a bright horseman
To his black steed,
To have given a face
To these words — woman, children,
And to have been a shore
For the wandering continents
And to have come upon the soul
With tiny strokes of the oars,
For it is scared away
By a brusque approach.
It is beautiful to have known
The shade under the leaves,
And to have felt age
Creep over the naked body,
And have accompanied pain
Of black blood in our veins,
And gilded its silence
With the star, Patience,
And to have all these words
Moving around in the head,
To choose the least beautiful of them
And let them have a ball,
To have felt life,
Hurried and ill loved,
And locked it up
In this poetry.

Hommage à la Vie

C’est beau d’avoir élu
Domicile vivant
Et de loger le temps
Dans un coeur continu,
Et d’avoir vu ses mains
Se poser sur le monde
Comme sur une pomme
Dans un petit jardin,
D’avoir aimé la terre,
La lune et le soleil,
Comme des familiers
Qui n’ont pas leurs pareils,
Et d’avoir confié
Le monde à sa mémoire
Comme un clair cavalier
A sa monture noire,
D’avoir donné visage
A ces mots: femme, enfants,
Et servi de rivage
A d’errants continents,
Et d’avoir atteint l’âme
A petit coups de rame
Pour ne l’effaroucher
D’une brusque approchée.
C’est beau d’avoir connu
L’ombre sous le feuillage
Et d’avoir senti l’âge
Ramper sur le corps nu,
Accompagné la peine
Du sang noir dans nos veines
Et doré son silence
De l’étoile Patience,
Et d’avoir tous ces mots
Qui bougent dans la tête,
De choisir les moins beaux
Pour leur faire un peu fête,
D’avoir senti la vie
Hâtive et mal aimée,
De l’avoir enfermée
Dans cette poésie.

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