Holiness, I walk towards you | Gwen Garnier-Duguy

For Pauline

At daybreak I take up the walk again. My body carries the leavings of the European continent whose peoples inhabit my stride. Innumerable hands of those now gone to earth flutter over my shoulders, sustaining me with their hope that I will return to the certainties they have bequeathed me.  I speak Old French, Latin. It seems I know the Greek language. The Loire, the Rhone, the Tigris and Euphrates and the Nile run in my veins. The waters of the Jordan flow through my memories. I do not know how I will survive. My refusal to walk with the princes on the razor’s edge of power has left doubts. Doubt returns to me. The horror of deprivation makes my heart beat too fast. The spectacle of corruption invades the pupils of my eyes. I know I can kill. I catch a glimpse of a triangular white sail on the horizon. I exhort Icarus to rise toward the sun of my body. I have grown arms to embrace the immensity of life. I start my walk again. I believe in God but today I do not know how to name him. I crush all doubt with a firm step like the pebbles beneath my feet. I follow the beacon light that my mind shows me. Blood trickles from every pore of my skin. The blood makes a perfect circle around the estuaries of my body. My blood is as red as the skies. The skies perch on my shoulders and flap like a cape as I advance. I look with compassion on the cries of the traitors who have tried to deafen us. To their siren songs I hold out my hand in pardon. I walk in the flux of the world, my muscles, my body filling with the energy of those who plunge into life. I continue the walk. I take the invisible stairway. I breathe the glorious music of the Pyramids. Behind me all the trees are blossoming. My gaze steady, I walk toward the widening constellations of my azure sky. I walk in the purity of its music, rising toward the summit of my hope, holiness I walk toward you.

From the French “Sainteté je marche vers toi,” by Gwen Garnier-Duguy,  English text by Elizabeth Brunazzi

***

That which is prevented
each day
from entering our human realm
descends gently
into the memory of our being
residing there-patient-
until the moment it becomes the soil
moving terror to another side
where it changes into the flowers
opening on an apple tree

Poem from Dance Upon the Territory
Interpreted in English by Elizabeth Brunazzi

***

Alone must be chosen
amidst terror and disaster
the word that lights up
constellations in the night sky
The integument of life
summons
beacons of thought
like a woman reclining
languorous
the bloom of the future nestled in her breast

Poem from Dance Upon the Territory
Interpreted in English by Elizabeth Brunazzi

Indian Review | Author | Gwen Garnier-Duguy’s poetry was first published in 1995 in the surrealist-inspired review Supérieur Inconnu and continued to appear in the publication until 2005. Gwen Garnier-Duguy and Matthieu Baumier founded the online magazine Recours au poème

Indian Review | Author | Gwen Garnier-Duguy’s poetry was first published in 1995 in the surrealist-inspired review Supérieur Inconnu and continued to appear in the publication until 2005.
In 2003 he participated in a colloquium on the poet Patrice de la Tour du Pin at the Collège de France and gave a presentation on the poetics of absence central to La Quête de Joie.
Fascinated by the painting of Robert Mangú, Garnier-Duguy wrote a novel on the artist, Nox, published by the Éditions le Grand Souffle.
His poems have also been published in the reviews Sarrazine, La Soeur de l’Ange, POESIEDirecte, Les cahiers du sens, Le Bateau Fantôme, La main millénaire,Nunc, Les hommes sans épaules, Phoenix, Siècle 21. Ditch poetry (Canada), Polja (Serbie), The Enchanting Verses Literary Review (Inde).
His poem Sainteté je marche vers toi was published in L’année poétique, 2009, by Seghers.
In 2011 Éditions de l’Atlantique published his first collection of poetry Danse sur le territoire, amorce de la parole, with a preface by Michel Host, recipient of the Goncourt prize in 1986.
Gwen Garnier-Duguy and Matthieu Baumier founded the online magazine Recours au poème devoted to international poetry in May 2012.