ALLEGRIA Poem by Pierre Alféri

What is this impulse
It's an annihilating movement
But it's also
Joy stripped of content.


What is this impulse that sends you hurtling down
The stairs, missing out the steps of regular breath
When breathing in ‘hee', breathing out ‘haw' until you reach the springboard
Street? - Note that I'm not asking
Where that step comes from, too light
For anything to be placed on it, not even a question.
I'd like to name it in memory of a rather offbeat
Dialogue in which words got carried off with
The sheets of the block where they'd been neatly aligned
Knocked over by a gust of wind. - Out
Of our sight! Words incapable
Of containing the pathos-less emotion of the wind:
The wind because what exactly were we talking about
Wielding neologisms and heavier periphrases
To capture finer nuances? - Of nothing at all
That's the point. Oh well it's the same today
If I ask you what you're thinking of, you cling on
Intent to run the length of an endless spiral
To whatever rail, thick presence, central pillar, anything
That prevents life going off course: certainty here
And now or subject of conversation. - Nothing!
Anyhow it was enough to ask the question
As you drop a sheet before the blades at the end
Of a line to see if it'll take off at the beginning
Of the next. - At the moment you rebound
From the pavement following the last step
You're no more than a photogram and the landscape with you
Frozen by the pause button on the videotape player
But one that doesn't want to stop, trembles like a leaf
Or a trapped rodent struggling to rejoin
Its fellows. The image too wants to enter into the dance
Of images/second. What is this impulse that
Outmodes all deposits, parked cars
Buildings unharmed by the night's bombardments
And waking resolutions? From any point of view,
Whether exterior hidden in the landscape
Crossed abolished as a sniper keeps his gun trained on you
To avenge the universe to which you're directing this dirty trick
Or inside, your vision stripped of its reference points,
It's an annihilating movement, climb and abject fall
An inextinguishable thirst, a repeated call
For sacrifice (and I add to this on purpose), it accelerates
Devastation. - But it's also
Just the opposite this one-way trip
That nothing can justify. Not a pleasure
For it gets you nothing and each moment deprives you
Of the spectacle wrapped into the rear-view mirror
Gaze fixed on the stub of road lunging
At you. Joy stripped of content:
The visible idea of dance in the mirror
That has consumed the wall behind the projectors emptying
The floor of its dancers in training too concerned
About where their right foot is (upbeat) and their left
At the back and to the side (downbeat) to admire their own
Twirls. Gone for good like you
Parisians of a long-exposed photo by Atget
Speeding did they at least experience orgasm
In a sneeze? - The stroboscope resuscitates them
As dancers, fugitives, ghosts caught on the run
Time enough to recognize them as brothers in arms
Then we'll have to pick up other combustible images
Burn the furniture until we find the explosive
Dose of absence, joy and movement.

Translation: Kate Campbell