The French Translation

The French Translation

The French Translation

A copy of Portrait by her unmade bed . . .
Embracing in their common hatred

what am I, against the gut alliance
of Catholic Ireland and Catholic France?

But Dedalus, I know you through and through!
We even share a name. Reading you

I sprouted wings and fled. We are both
at an angle to England, travelling south.

Will you, this once, speak for two of us,
direct her simple wilful heart, release

those channels to remorse, possess her mind,
as I come flying humbly on behind?

I doubt you would enter in so far.
What were your ardent ways but a posture

for being in despair. You had the knack
of detaching what you needed from the ache

of merely needing . . . Her brief, stifled yawn
has frazzled my patchwork wings to the bone.

. . . I glimpsed you as I fell, you venerable
heartless survivor, flying out of trouble.