If I write by the light of my lamp
\nDisorderly and empty verses
\nUncertainly with this small stub in my tired hand
\nIf I write at night on the back of envelopes
\nInsignificant poems: poor merchandise
\nIn which are found only wildflowers…
\nAnd a crumb of love,
\nAll this I do for those I love.<\/p>\n
Yet I do write, other poems
\nNot by the light of the lamp.
\nBut by the rays of the Sun
\nNot on the back of envelopes
\nBut on the bare breast of the One I love,
\nOn the bare skin of the Country I love.
\nI don’t write them with a pencil stub
\nBut with steel tools…
\n—Don’t think of a lance or sword,
\nMy tools are tools of peace and of existence—<\/p>\n
I don’t write verses of twelve feet
\nIn counting on my fingers,
\nBut of twelve-by twenty paces … and more.
\nMy verses are written swath by swath
\nWith the sharp steel of my scythe on the yellow hair of my country
\nThe Sun turns them into fragrant poems
\nThat my cows scatter for me during winter nights.<\/p>\n
My verses are written with the blade of my plow
\nOn the living flesh of my Brittany, furrow after furrow
\n—In which I hide grains of gold—
\nSpringtime turns them into poems
\nEmerald seas waving in the breeze.
\nSummer turns them into lovely lakes of shafts
\nThe Harvest-Wind sets them to music
\nAnd the clanging of the thresher sings them to me
\nDuring the hot days of the eighth month
\nDuring days of pain and dust and sweat
\nMy poems sacred and …disdained!<\/p>\n
March 1966.<\/p>\n
Translated by Lenora Timm<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
If I write by the light of my lamp Disorderly and empty verses Uncertainly with this small stub in my tired hand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[96],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poemes-en-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n