Violet E. Cooper
j’attends qu’on me choisisse trébuchante et ratée
qu’on m’étreigne à pleins bras quand je m’enfarge
qui embrasse avec la langue
lorsque les dents cognent
dieu peut-être
i am waiting for someone to choose me faltering and failing
someone to embrace me with open arms when i stumble
someone who kisses with tongue
even while teeth clash
god maybe would
et en bonne sainte
je pardonne à mon cousin sa violence
aussi verticale que la mienne
à mon père je pardonne tout je ne lui tiens rigueur
ni des bouteilles
ni des médicaments jamais pris
ni du déni où perlent ses manquements
(pour sa chair qui n’est pas la mienne
longtemps je me suis faite chambre noire
ai tiré les négatifs
de tous mes dérèglements)
c’est obscène mais je crois même que je pardonne
aux tontons macoutes d’avoir forcé les vannes
de la tristesse de mon père
j’aurais sans doute été plus brisée encore que lui si
à douze ans on m’avait envoyée en prison
à cause d’un frère communiste
des mois à penser chaque jour qu’il serait tué le lendemain
pour leurs tortures je ne nourris pas de rancoeur
puisque la portée je ne la connais qu’en bribes
and like a proper saint
i forgive my cousin for his violence
as inherited as mine
i forgive my father i don’t hold it against him at all
not the bottles
nor the medications never taken
nor the denial in which his failings gleam
(for his skin which is not mine
for a long time i made myself into a dark room
collected the negatives
of all my disturbances)
it’s obscene but i even forgive
the tontons macoutes who tightened the valves
of my father’s sadness
i would have without a doubt been more bruised still than him if
at twelve i was sent to prison
because of a communist brother
months spent thinking that he would be killed the next day
i hold no grudge against their tortures
since i only know the scope in bits and pieces
crispée étroite et haletante
je réponds au besoin de sacrifice
en même temps que je réponds
au besoin d’absence de sacrifice
est-ce que je peux être une femme
et me sauver quand même
prendre la fuite rampante et sanctifiée
les portes de sortie ont-elles assez d’orifices
ou devrais-je en forer d’autres
quand je creuse assez loin en moi-même
j’arrive au coeur tremblant de la terre
pour repartir ensuite vers les cimes et les arêtes
tense close and panting
i respond to the need for sacrifice
at the same time as i respond
to the need for the absence of sacrifice
can i be a woman
and save myself all the same
sanctified i make a crawling escape
the exit doors do they have enough holes
or should i drill some more
when i dig deep enough in myself
i arrive at the trembling heart of the earth
only to restart at the peaks and ridges
je lui demandais de me prendre dès qu’il le voudrait
et pour ce faire pour qu’il me voie
qu’il me choisisse
en tout temps
je priais
dans les hagiographies que j’emprunterai
bientôt à la bibliothèque
je constaterai que mon nom
ne figure nulle part dans ces histoires de ravissement
d’épreuves d’orages de guerres de feux
de morts de guérisons toutes saluées par lui
moi qui déjà aimais tant mourir
moi pour qui la mort était
une forme à prendre
une matière vive
une porte
i asked him to take me whenever he wanted
so that he sees me
so that he chooses me
at all times
i prayed
in the hagiographies that i will soon
borrow at the library
i will observe that my name
figures nowhere in histories of rapture
of trials of storms of wars of fire
of deaths of healing all greeted by him
me who already loved dying so much
me for whom death was
a form to take
a living substance
a door
nous femmes amères sommes ce qui est collant
nous sommes les trous que rien ne peut remplir
n’essayez pas de nous combler
nous allumons des cierges dans nos cathédrales de faïence
notre impatience est un risque
chaque ligne qui dévie est une bonne raison
de se vider dans quelque chose
mais il n’est rien qui puisse contenir les femmes amères
nos viscères sont bridés d’euphories dévastatrices
qui nous font roter quand elles remontent
et nous continuons d’être des îles sans ponts
we bitter women are what sticks
we are the holes that nothing can fill
don’t try to satisfy us
we light candles in our cathedrals of earthenware
our impatience is a risk
each deviating line is a good reason
to empty ourselves into something
but there is nothing that can contain bitter women
our organs are bridled with devastating euphorias
which make us belch when they rise up
and we continue to be islands without bridges
fractionnée et insuffisante
je n’ai pas eu le choix des alliances m’attacher c’est survivre
au moins liée je ne disparais pas tout à fait grain de sable
d’une plage que l’océan gobe
je me redis le mot amour chaque fois
que crachée par le ressac
je dois me coudre un nouvel outfit
pour espérer disparaître un peu mieux dans la foule
fragmented and inadequate
i didn’t have the choice of alliances to bond is to survive
at least linked i won’t disappear all at once into a grain of sand
of a beach that the ocean swallows
i repeat the word love each time
spit out by the surf
i must sew myself a new outfit
to hope to disappear a little better in the crowd
Translator’s Note
Lush yet viperous, euphoric yet maddened, collective yet isolated — Chloé Savoie-Bernard’s poetry collection, Sainte Chloé de l’amour (2021), is a cosmos of dualities. These dualities never remain static: with each turn of the page they take on new, more vivid shapes and contours. Chloé’s poetry unfurls, flows, flings itself at the reader, tracing the exquisite passions of queer, female desire with a voice that is in turns both ornate and transgressive, precious and violent. Her words are a flaming red ribbon that snake around the boundaries of contemporary language — they reach to the past with questions, flush with the rage and indignation of oppressive histories, and face bravely to the future with a trepidatious, yet stern, hope. By translating these dualities, I transform them once more: I add a third parallel to Chloé’s rich cosmos. For this reason, it was imperative to shape Chloé’s delicately rendered verse with an equally delicate hand — preserving the rare, raw edge of her words without muddling or dimming them. It also meant engaging in earnest dialogue with Chloé, educating myself on the histories and mythologies that sustain her work.
Translation often begins with humility. It is an art of imperfection, in which I must admit the limits of my knowledge. Approaching Sainte Chloé de l’amour for the first time, I did not know exactly what Chloé refers to when she writes of the “tontons macoutes” — a special operations unit of the Haitian paramilitary force, or an old Haitian mythological phrase meaning “bogey man.” The term is heavy with meaning; one has the feeling reading the original that it is the phrase that the poem hangs on. It seemed not only wrong but impossible to translate it into one of many permutations in English. “Tontons macoutes” becomes even weightier, more pressing, when left untranslated; appropriately, the phrase, and what it represents, is a foreign entity that splices, that haunts the poem. Chloé’s work often invokes such acute words — acute in the sense that they strike the reader, and perforate the verse — whether because the word is archaic, unusual in its application or context, or untranslatable to English. When the speaker, for example, visits the library to read “hagiographies,” meaning the biographies of saints, even a perfect cognate might not aid a reader who does not have prior knowledge of the term, equally obscure in English and French. Like “tontons macoutes,” the poem snags on “hagiographies” — the thing that is left unknown, that becomes the epicenter of meaning.
It is difficult to approach a translation without always, in the back of one’s mind, seeking le mot juste. When translating poetry, this impossible pursuit feels even more imperative, given the sparsity and specificity of the form, and thus, the attention that each individual word demands. For instance, with the verse “je pardonne à mon cousin sa violence / aussi verticale que la mienne,” I was faced with the tricky task of translating “verticale,” which most literally means “vertical” or “upright.” After a conversation with Chloé, I opted instead for “inherited,” relying on the subtextual association of lineage, and the speaker’s very own family tree scrawled on the page, to express the verticality that is visible in the original text. But, by renouncing the exact translation, was I marring the delicately wrought composition of the poem? Would one departure cause the foundation to crumble?
Sainte Chloé de l’amour is skeptical of this kind of preciousness. The speaker often asks: at what point is a word, a person, a saint immutable, absolute, utterly unique and irreplaceable? These inquiries inspired me. If Sainte Chloé rebuffs perfection, the translation may too. And once I had shed my paragon of le mot juste, the collection bloomed into a roiling catalog of feelings, connotations, and impressions, splaying in directions that I had not previously had the freedom or courage to consider. I revisited especially the word groupings that Sainte Chloé de l’amour features in spades. Translating “crispée étroite et haletante,” I likely went through a dozen possible combinations before landing on “tense close and panting.” It was almost like calculating the myriad ways that one can solve a Rubik’s cube. Or, in another instance: “fractionnée et insuffisante,” a seemingly straightforward coupling, but if you look closer, an island unto itself. With such an array of linguistic offerings at my hands, I cultivated the climate of these miniature islands; I made the surface read “fragmented and inadequate.”
In many ways, I think of Sainte Chloé de l’amour a matryoshka, a Russian doll, of archipelagos. I mean this even in the most macro sense — one can imagine a poetry collection as an archipelagic structure, in which poems, and the individual words or couplings of words such as those I described above, are islands. The collection strings them along — unlike prose, there is no sense of chronology. Rather, the emphasis is on space. How much space does this word, does this line, take up on the page? Enjambment, especially when the translation demands that you alter it, feels like an earthquake. For the most part, I tried to preserve the original syntax, the inversions, the inherent questionings and doubling-backs, which are vital to the voice of Sainte Chloé. “Les portes de sortie ont-elles assez d’orifices (The exit doors do they have enough holes)” is one such instance of syntactical whiplash. It is not only geography that is important here, but movement.
Beyond its form, Sainte Chloé de l’amour deeply concerned with archipelagic social relations. The speaker identifies herself within a group of “femmes amères” who do not convene: “a community in which the members / don’t have each other’s telephone numbers.” These “bitter women” are not friends with each other — instead, they are united invisibly by pain, isolation, oppression. Identification without connection; islands without bridges. The speaker searches for community, for communion, in other forms: hagiographies that exclude her, fraught family histories that she struggles to make sense of. Ultimately, the self, too, is an island: “when i dig deep enough in myself / i arrive at the trembling heart of the earth / only to restart at the peaks and ridges.” The speaker arrives at self-definition through perseverance in the face of negation, just as she arrives at love through a seemingly impossible faith. And still, she revels in the fickleness of this plight, the helpless hopefulness of this hopscotching across the archipelagos of self, community, love, and faith.
Even the dualities that recur in Sainte Chloé de l’amour become ingrained in the collection’s landscape; they are “devastating euphorias” that do not erupt, but rise and gradually pass. And so the pleas and prayers, the passions and frustrations, the raptures and ruptures, attune to the environment, either through careful erosion or sudden demolition. And both processes provide catharsis. Through these ebbs and flows of healing and transformation, Sainte Chloé de l’amour _becomes as alive as the richly contoured, steadfastly beating heart on the collection’s cover, in English as it is in French.
Violet E. Cooper is a writer, translator, and PhD student in English and American Literature at Boston University. Her work seeks to frame the modernist and French avant-garde experiments of the 20th century as the inceptive ground for what we have come to call ‘autofiction.’ Applying this research to the contemporary moment, she hopes to study the ways in which autofiction and autotheory might expand — or adversely, reify — conceptions of self, gender, and sexuality.