Traduction - Jean Joubert

Here the childhood's house

Here the childhood's house

i am pushing the grey door,

i am coming into what was the kitchen

now on dark and empty.

It looks like in the silence

the air tenderly shivers

as if a butterfly or a dwarfish bat

was flying from the ceiling.

Smell of garlic and wilt rose.

Here there were a table and three chairs

and there the kitchen sink, the cupboard and the cook.

A vaguely figure and as transparent

is sitting motionless, then he turns to me,

figure of a man which is raising slowly a hand

and which lips are moving :

My father, I know it, who is trying to tell me

what he has never told me,

in vain tries hardly to speak

but I can't even hear a rustle.

Finally, as smoke that wind torments,

the figure shakes a little and fades.

Later, I saw him again at twilight, on the hill.

He was walking.

He was carying a child on his shoulders.