They pass through, and see through us (from Ils passent et nous pensent)
tu demandes
sous tes pas
c’est ton sol ?
you ask
beneath your feet
is this your land?
je n’ai pas traversé les Pyrénées je n’ai pas suivi la neige
pas à pas sans demeure
je n’ai pas
demandé au ciel de m’épargner
(encore que)
je n’ai pas parcouru des centaines de milliers de pas sous la tempête
et la peur d’être vue découverte
la peur d’être et d’avoir une langue propre
qui ne conviendra pas
au survivant
I have not crossed the Pyrenees I did not follow the snows
step by step without shelter
I have not
asked heaven to spare me
(even though)
I did not take hundreds of thousands of steps through storms
and the fear of being seen uncovered
the fear of being and having a language of my own
that would not serve
a survivor
je n’ai pas atterri sur les plages
je n’ai pas demandé l’asile ou le refuge
je n’ai accompli aucun exploit
(si ce n’est survivre à d’autres forces hostiles)
je suis petite et mon chemin n’a peut-être pas encore commencé
même s’il ne me reste plus
tant de temps à gonfler sous la lumière mon poumon
I did not land on the beaches
I did not ask for asylum or refuge
I did not perform any great deed
(except to survive other hostile forces)
I am little and my journey may not yet have begun
even if I no longer have
much time to fill my lungs in the light
il n’est pas toujours temps
depuis le bord de la langue
d’accoster sur l’autre rive et
même déposée là
au milieu de l’eau lisse
on s’égratigne
it is not always time
to land on the other shore
from the edge of language and
even moored here
surrounded by smooth water
we grate against each other
CHRISTINE GUINARD’s family fled Spain during La Retirada, when 500,000 people escaped to France after the fall of Barcelona in 1939. In a time of fear and xenophobia, the welcome offered to these refugees often resembled that offered today, both here and abroad, to those forced to leave their homes in order to survive. This history continues to have a profound influence on Guinard’s work. A translator as well as a poet, musician and filmmaker, she published the Journal of a Catalan Refugee in 2012. She has published seven poetry collections, most recently Ils passent et nous pensent (Unicité, 2023) and Vous étiez un monde (Gallimard, 2023). An earlier collection, Sténopé (Unicité, 2019), won the Prix de Poésie from the city of Rambouillet/Association Arts et Lettres (2020). She lives in Brussels, and teaches French and classical languages at the École Européenne Lille Métropole.
SUSANNA LANG’s translation of poetry by Souad Labbize, My Soul Has No Corners, is available from Diálogos Books (2023), and a new collection by Labbize, Unfasten the silk of your silence, was published by Éditions des Lisières (2025). My Forests, poems by Hélène Dorion, is forthcoming from Book*hug Press. Other translations include Words in Stone by Yves Bonnefoy (University of Massachusetts Press, 1976). Her translations of these and other French poets are published or forthcoming in Asymptote, Delos, The Literary Review, Transference, Another Chicago Magazine, Ezra, Oomph! Journal, Mayday, AzonaL, The Ilanot Review, and Columbia Journal. Her chapbook of original poems, Like This, appeared in 2023 from Unsolicited Books, and her fourth full-length collection, This Spangled Dark, is forthcoming from Cornerstone Press. In 2024, she won the Marvin Bell Memorial Poetry Prize, awarded by December Magazine for “In Your Father’s Garden.” More information available at www.susannalang.com.
