Series Notes Contact Rehearsal Hotel
67.
LXXXIX. Le cygne /The Swan / A cormorant / Legato
Alix Chauvet (After Baudelaire)
A still from Huw Wahl’s The Republics (16mm, 83m).
LXXXIX. Le cygne /
Alix Chauvet (After Baudelaire)
* * *
* * *
An afterwork, owing to Chauvet’s ‘Yellowjacket,’ Cyclamen ...
* * *
A poem commissioned by Lisa Robertson for
a workshop, AUP (Paris, 2025).
* * *
Andromaque, je pense à vous ! Ce petit fleuve,
Pauvre et triste miroir où jadis resplendit
L’immense majesté de vos douleurs de veuve,
Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit,
A fécondé soudain ma mémoire fertile,
Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel.
Le vieux Paris n'est plus (la forme d'une ville
Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel);
Je ne vois qu'en esprit tout ce camp de baraques,
Ces tas de chapiteaux ébauchés et de fûts,
Les herbes, les gros blocs verdis par l'eau des flaques,
Et, brillant aux carreaux, le bric-à-brac confus.
Là s'étalait jadis une ménagerie;
Là je vis, un matin, à l’heure où sous les cieux
Froids et clairs le Travail s'éveille, où la voirie
Pousse un sombre ouragan dans l'air silencieux,
Un cygne qui s'était évadé de sa cage,
Et, de ses pieds palmés frottant le pavé sec,
Sur le sol raboteux traînait son blanc plumage.
Près d'un ruisseau sans eau la bête ouvrant le bec
Baignait nerveusement ses ailes dans la poudre,
Et disait, le coeur plein de son beau lac natal:
«Eau, quand donc pleuvras-tu? quand tonneras-tu, foudre?»
Je vois ce malheureux, mythe étrange et fatal,
Vers le ciel quelquefois, comme l’homme d’Ovide,
Vers le ciel ironique et cruellement bleu,
Sur son cou convulsif tendant sa tête avide
Comme s'il adressait des reproches à Dieu!
[...]
*
You come to mind in cameos— in watermarks,
countlessly repeated on the surface of days,
robbing them all of me ‘fore I wake up to them.
The ill-gotten river you want me to cry
lacquers my memories— like Japanese boxes
of you, making your way through the Quai Malaquais.
Paris, Paname Paname.
(the heart of a city changes to fast, alas, for anyone to care)
Amidst the frantic smears of my thumb and index
all I can see are dull, amputated houses
and baskets of chickweed yellowed by the decades
overwriting your past.
Your poorly managed shop used to be on this street.
There I saw, one morning,
at the hour when planes alarm the dusky sky,
and cars streak across slush in vague catastrophe,
a cormorant walking along a scaffolding,
playing a eerie tune with his webbed, calloused feet.
(A lumpy legato, shaking his crested head)
Near the ice-cold gutter, the stray bird was feeding
on polypropylene from a grey tarpaulin,
and through his aqua eyes, he asked if nature burned—
and who lit the fire?
At times, the animal visits me in my dreams.
Hapless and ominous— just as your cameos,
he spreads his troubled wings with back turned to me
and spews out his anger at the unstoppable.
[...]
Order Chauvet’s Cyclamen from Tenement direct.
Alix Chauvet is a Swiss-French poet and graphic designer based in Amsterdam, taking pleasure in the possibilities of translation. She received her ba in graphic design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, 2020, and has since been working independently and in collaboration with contemporary artists. Investigating the relationship between language and body, her hybrid practice covers a wide range of visual and linguistic experiments—from artist’s book design to experimental translation. Her method is rooted in slowing down the creative process through the use of analogue and unprofitable techniques such as cut-outs, letterpress, linocut, handwriting and painting. Her poetic approach follows the same logic, prioritising English over her mother tongue as a way to relate to language with both critical detachment and a degree of identification. Her poems appeared in literary magazines such as Blackbox Manifold. Cyclamen is Chauvet’s debut collection.
Back to Rehearsal.
* * *
A poem commissioned by Lisa Robertson for
a workshop, AUP (Paris, 2025).
* * *
Andromaque, je pense à vous ! Ce petit fleuve,
Pauvre et triste miroir où jadis resplendit
L’immense majesté de vos douleurs de veuve,
Ce Simoïs menteur qui par vos pleurs grandit,
A fécondé soudain ma mémoire fertile,
Comme je traversais le nouveau Carrousel.
Le vieux Paris n'est plus (la forme d'une ville
Change plus vite, hélas! que le coeur d'un mortel);
Je ne vois qu'en esprit tout ce camp de baraques,
Ces tas de chapiteaux ébauchés et de fûts,
Les herbes, les gros blocs verdis par l'eau des flaques,
Et, brillant aux carreaux, le bric-à-brac confus.
Là s'étalait jadis une ménagerie;
Là je vis, un matin, à l’heure où sous les cieux
Froids et clairs le Travail s'éveille, où la voirie
Pousse un sombre ouragan dans l'air silencieux,
Un cygne qui s'était évadé de sa cage,
Et, de ses pieds palmés frottant le pavé sec,
Sur le sol raboteux traînait son blanc plumage.
Près d'un ruisseau sans eau la bête ouvrant le bec
Baignait nerveusement ses ailes dans la poudre,
Et disait, le coeur plein de son beau lac natal:
«Eau, quand donc pleuvras-tu? quand tonneras-tu, foudre?»
Je vois ce malheureux, mythe étrange et fatal,
Vers le ciel quelquefois, comme l’homme d’Ovide,
Vers le ciel ironique et cruellement bleu,
Sur son cou convulsif tendant sa tête avide
Comme s'il adressait des reproches à Dieu!
[...]
À Victor Hugo
*
You come to mind in cameos— in watermarks,
countlessly repeated on the surface of days,
robbing them all of me ‘fore I wake up to them.
The ill-gotten river you want me to cry
lacquers my memories— like Japanese boxes
of you, making your way through the Quai Malaquais.
Paris, Paname Paname.
(the heart of a city changes to fast, alas, for anyone to care)
Amidst the frantic smears of my thumb and index
all I can see are dull, amputated houses
and baskets of chickweed yellowed by the decades
overwriting your past.
Your poorly managed shop used to be on this street.
There I saw, one morning,
at the hour when planes alarm the dusky sky,
and cars streak across slush in vague catastrophe,
a cormorant walking along a scaffolding,
playing a eerie tune with his webbed, calloused feet.
(A lumpy legato, shaking his crested head)
Near the ice-cold gutter, the stray bird was feeding
on polypropylene from a grey tarpaulin,
and through his aqua eyes, he asked if nature burned—
and who lit the fire?
At times, the animal visits me in my dreams.
Hapless and ominous— just as your cameos,
he spreads his troubled wings with back turned to me
and spews out his anger at the unstoppable.
[...]
À Victor Hugo
Order Chauvet’s Cyclamen from Tenement direct.
Alix Chauvet is a Swiss-French poet and graphic designer based in Amsterdam, taking pleasure in the possibilities of translation. She received her ba in graphic design from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam, 2020, and has since been working independently and in collaboration with contemporary artists. Investigating the relationship between language and body, her hybrid practice covers a wide range of visual and linguistic experiments—from artist’s book design to experimental translation. Her method is rooted in slowing down the creative process through the use of analogue and unprofitable techniques such as cut-outs, letterpress, linocut, handwriting and painting. Her poetic approach follows the same logic, prioritising English over her mother tongue as a way to relate to language with both critical detachment and a degree of identification. Her poems appeared in literary magazines such as Blackbox Manifold. Cyclamen is Chauvet’s debut collection.
Back to Rehearsal.