She Painted Artichokes
For my mother
You had nothing to say so you painted some splendid artichokes
You took them from the kitchen and placed them on a black chair
You didn’t think about it
You had no doubts
You went from the kitchen to the studio
Like a priest passing from the sacristy to the altar
The all had turned to nothing
And now this nothing became something once again
The artichokes told the extraordinary story of green
And the chair the humble tale of black
Their stories were like those told by old women
On the village square, near the fountain
At the close of day
Filaments of time, of life
That are no longer anything and once were everything
And become something again in the tender evening light
You had nothing to say, so you took your brushes and spatulas
You pressed the tubes of paint
And you painted metaphysical vegetables
On an existential chair
You told the extraordinary tale of everything turned to nothing
Re-transformed into something by a pair of artichokes
ELLE A PEINT DES ARTICHAUTS
Tu n’avais rien à dire alors tu as peint des artichauts admirables
Tu les as pris dans la cuisine et tu les as posés sur une chaise noire
Tu n’as pas réfléchi
Tu n’as pas douté
Tu es passée de la cuisine à l’atelier
Comme un prêtre passe de la sacristie à l’autel
Les légumes sont devenus un symbole
Le tout est devenu rien
Et ce rien est redevenu le tout
Tu n’avais rien à dire alors la toile est restée intacte là où tu ne savais pas
Quoi y mettre
Elle est restée nue mais tu n’as pas eu honte de sa nudité
Les artichauts racontent l’histoire extraordinaire du vert
Et la chaise l’histoire humble du noir
Ces histoires sont comme celles des vieilles
Sur la place du village, autour de la fontaine
À la tombée du jour
Des filaments de temps, de vie
Qui ne sont rien, l’un, l’autre, après avoir été tout
Et le redeviennent dans la lumière tendre du soir
Tu n’avais rien à dire alors tu as pris tes pinceaux et tes spatules
Tu as pressé les tubes de couleur
Et tu as peint des légumes métaphysiques
Sur une chaise existentielle
Tu as raconté l’histoire extraordinaire du rien
Transformé par une paire d’artichauts en tout
Translator: Marilyn Hacker is the author of twelve books of poems, including Names and Desesperanto (Norton P), and an essay collection, Unauthorized Voices (Michigan P). Her translations from the French include Marie Etienne’s King of a Hundred Horsemen (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux), which received the 2009 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, and Amina Saïd’s The Present Tense of the World (Black Widow P). For her own work, she received the PEN Voelcker Award for poetry in 2010. She is a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.
