Claude Esteban was a French poet, essayist, and translator. He published thirteen books of poems and several collections of essays on poetry, literature, and visual art, and he translated Paz, Borges, and García Lorca into French. He was awarded the Mallarmé Prize, the Grand Prix de Poésie de la Société des gens de lettres, the France Culture Prize, and the Prix Goncourt.
Around the bend of a phrase
you return, it's dawn in a book, it's
a garden, one can
...
Someone, and no matter who, inhabits my head like it's an empty house, he enters, he leaves, he bangs each door behind him, powerless I put up with this ruckus.
...
Toi
qui marches, qui ne veut pas voir
descends, descends toujours jusqu'aux royaumes
de l'infertile
là tout un peuple bouge, ombres
des pères que les fils bafouent, reines
qui dansent dans leur délire et loin,
très loin sur une falaise
un homme qui regarde la mer et qui murmure,
montagnes de l'écume, rendez-la moi.
...
You
who walk, who do not wish to see
go down, go down always, even
to the barren kingdoms
there a whole people stir, shades
of fathers confounded by their sons, queens
who dance in their frenzy and far,
faraway upon a cliff edge
a man who looks at the sea and murmurs,
mountains of foam, restore it to me.
...