Poems by Francis Ponge

Poems

• l'Orange Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Just as in a sponge, there is in the orange a yearning to recover its content after having been subjected to the ordeal of squeezing.
  
  But whereas the sponge always succeeds, the orange never does, for its cells have burst, its tissues have been torn.
  
  Whilst the rind alone, thanks to its elasticity, slowly regains its shape, an amber liquid has spilled, accompanied it's true by delicate refreshment and odor, but often too by the bitter awareness of a premature ejaculation of seeds.
  
  Must we choose between these two ways of not tolerating oppression?
  
  The sponge is only a muscle and fills up with air, with clean water or with dirty water as the case may be: such adaptability is ignoble.
  
  The orange has better taste, but it is too passive, and this savory sacrifice -- it's giving too good a return to the oppressor.
  
  Yet it's not enough to have only spoken of the orange's special way of scenting the air and rejoicing its executioner.
  
  Emphasis must be placed on the glorious color of the resulting juice which, better than that of the lemon, forces one's throat wide open as much to pronounce the word as to swallow the liquid, with no apprehensive grimace of anticipation since it won't make the tastebuds prickle.
  
  Beyond this, one is unable to find words to express the admiration evoked by the covering of this tender, fragile, pink oval ball inside its thick moist absorbant blotting paper of which the extremely thin but intensely colored epidermis with its bitter oil is just ruddy enough to catch worthily the light that reveals the perfect form of the fruit.
  
  But to end this too short study, conducted from as many angles as possible, one must at last deal with the seed.
  
  This grain, shaped like a minuscule lemon, looks from the outside to be the same color as the white wood of the lemon tree but inside is green like a pea or a delicate new shoot.
  
  It is here in the seed that -- after the sensational explosion of the Chinese lantern of tastes, colors, and perfumes which the body of the fruit itself consists of -- one finds the relative hardness and greenness (not, by the way, entirely tasteless) of the wood and the branch and the leaf: in short, tiny but with certainty, the fruit's reason for being.
  
  Original Language version:
  Comme dans l'éponge il y a dans l'orange une aspiration à reprendre contenance après avoir subi l'épreuve de l'expression.
  
  Mais où l'éponge réussit toujours, l'orange jamais: car ses cellules ont éclaté, ses tissus se sont déchirés.
  
  Tandis que l'écorce seule se rétablit mollement dans sa forme grâce à son élasticité, un liquide d'ambre s'est répandu, accompagné de rafraîchissement, de parfums suaves, certes, -- mais souvent aussi de la conscience amère d'une expulsion prématurée de pépins.
  
  Faut-il prendre parti entre ces deux manières de mal supporter l'oppression?
  
  -- L'éponge n'est que muscle et se remplit de vent, d'eau propre ou d'eau sale selon: cette gymnastique est ignoble.
  
  L'orange a meilleurs goût, mais elle est trop passive, -- et ce sacrifice odorant.
  
  .
  
  .
  
  c'est faire à l'opresseur trop bon compte vraiment.
  
  Mais ce n'est pas assez avoir dit de l'orange que d'avoir rappelé sa façon particulière de parfumer l'air et de réjouir son bourreau.
  
  Il faut mettre l'accent sur la coloration glorieuse du liquide qui en résulte et qui, mieux que le jus de citron, oblige le larynx à s'ouvrir largement pour la prononciation du mot comme pour l'ingestion du liquide, sans aucune moue appréhensive de l'avant-bouche dont il ne fait pas hérisser les papilles.
  
  Et l'on demeure au reste sans paroles pour avouer l'admiration que suscite l'enveloppe du tendre, fragile et rose ballon ovale dans cet épais tampon-buvard humide dont l'épiderme extrêmement mince mais très pigmenté, acerbement sapide, est juste assez rugueux pour accrocher dignement la lumière sur la parfaite forme du fruit.
  
  Mais à la fin d'une trop courte étude, menée aussi rondement que possible, -- il faut en venir au pépin.
  
  Ce grain, de la forme d'un minuscule citron, offre à l'extérieur la couleur du bois blanc de citronnier, à l'intérieur un vert de pois ou de germe tendre.
  
  C'est en lui que se retrouvent, après l'explosion sensationnelle de la lanterne vénitienne de saveurs, couleurs, et parfums que constitue le ballon fruité lui-même, -- la dureté relative et la verdeur (non d'ailleurs entièrement insipide) du bois, de la branche, de la feuille: somme toute petite quoique avec certitude la raison d'être du fruit.

• Crate Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Halfway betweencribandcagethe French language putscrate, a simple slatted box for transporting those fruits that fall ill at the least lack of air.
  
  Built in such a way that it can be broken down effortlessly after use, it is never used twice.
  
  It is really more perishable than the deliquescing foodstuffs that it carries.
  
  On the corners of streets that lead to the markets, it gleams like white wood without wood’s vanity.
  
  Still very new, and slightly surprised to find itself in this awkward position, having been thrown into the gutter without hope of retrieval, it remains a most likable object on whose fate we will not dwell for long.
  
  Translated from the French

• Rain Read Poem Log in to favourite

  The rain, in the backyard where I watch it fall, comes down at different 
rates.
  
  In the center a fine discontinuous curtain — or network — falls implacably and yet gently in drops that are probably quite light; a strengthless sempiternal precipitation, an intense fraction of the atmosphere at its purest.
  
  A little distance from the walls to the right and left plunk heavier drops, one by one.
  
  Here they seem about the size of grains of wheat, the size of a pea, while elsewhere they are big as marbles.
  
  Along gutters and window frames the rain runs horizontally, while depending from the same obstacles it hangs like individually wrapped candies.
  
  Along the entire surface of a little zinc roof under my eyes it trickles in a very thin sheet, a moiré pattern formed by the varying currents created by the imperceptible bumps and undulations of the surface.
  
  From the gutter it flows with the restraint of a shallow creek until it tumbles out into a perfectly vertical net, rather imperfectly braided, all the way to the ground where it breaks and sparkles into brilliant needles.
  
  Each of its forms has its particular allure and corresponds to a particular patter.
  
  Together they share the intensity of a complex mechanism 
as precise as it is dangerous, like a steam-powered clock whose spring is wound by the force of the precipitation.
  
  The ringing on the ground of the vertical trickles, the glug-glug of the gutters, the miniscule strikes of the gong multiply and resonate all at once in a concert without monotony, and not without a certain delicacy.
  
  Once the spring unwinds itself certain wheels go on turning for a while, more and more slowly, until the whole mechanism comes to a stop.
  
  It all vanishes with the sun: when it finally reappears, the brilliant apparatus evaporates.
  
  It has rained.
  
  Translated from the French

• Snails Read Poem Log in to favourite

  Unlike the ashes that make their home with hot coals, snails prefer moist earth.
  
  Go on: they advance while gluing themselves to it with their entire bodies.
  
  They carry it, they eat it, they shit it.
  
  They go through it, it goes through them.
  
  It’s the best kind of interpenetration, as between tones, one passive and one active.
  
  The passive bathes and nourishes the active, which overturns the other while it eats.
  
  (There is more to be said about snails.
  
  First of all their immaculate clamminess.
  
  Their sangfroid.
  
  Their stretchiness.
  
  )One can scarcely conceive of a snail outside its shell and unmoving.
  
  The moment it rests it sinks down deep into itself.
  
  In fact, its modesty obliges it to move as soon as it has shown its nakedness and 
revealed its vulnerable shape.
  
  The moment it’s exposed, it moves on.
  
  During periods of dryness they withdraw into ditches where it seems their bodies are enough to maintain their dampness.
  
  No doubt their neighbors there are toads and frogs and other ectothermic animals.
  
  But when they come out again they don’t move as quickly.
  
  You have to admire their willingness to go into the ditch, given how hard it is for them to come out again.
  
  Note also that though snails like moist soil, they have no affection for places that are too wet such as marshes or ponds.
  
  Most assuredly they prefer firm earth, as long as it’s fertile and damp.
  
  They are fond as well of moisture-rich vegetables and green leafy plants.
  
  They know how to feed on them leaving only the veins, cutting free the most tender leaves.
  
  They are hell on salads.
  
  What are these beings from the depths of the ditches?
  
  Though snails love many of their trenches’ qualities they have every intention of leaving.
  
  They are in their element but they are also wanderers.
  
  And when they emerge into the daylight onto firm ground their shells will preserve their vagabond’s hauteur.
  
  It must be a pain to have to haul that trailer around with them everywhere, but they never complain and in the end they are happy about it.
  
  How valuable, after all, to be able to go home any time, no matter where you may find yourself, eluding all intruders.
  
  It must be worth it.
  
  They are a little vain about this convenient ability: “Look at me, a vulnerable and sensitive being, who is nevertheless protected from unwanted guests, and so always in possession of happiness and peace of mind!” It’s not surprising the snail holds his head so high.
  
  “At the same time I am glued to the earth, always touching it, always progressing, though slowly, and always capable of pulling loose from the soil into myself.
  
  Après moi le déluge, I don’t care, the slightest kick may roll me anywhere.
  
  I can always get up again onto my single foot and reglue myself to the dirt where fate has planted me, and that’s my pantry: the earth, the most common of foods.
  
  ”Joy to the snail! But they leave their proud slime on everything they touch.
  
  A silvery trail follows them.
  
  And maybe this points the way for the beaks of birds that love to eat them.
  
  Ay, there’s the rub: “To be or not to be, that is the question!” Such vanity! But that’s the danger they face.
  
  Alone?
  
  Yes, the snail is quite alone.
  
  He has few friends.
  
  But he needs no friends to be happy.
  
  He sticks to Nature, he enjoys his perfect nearness, he is the friend of the soil which he kisses with his whole body.
  
  And he befriends the leaves, and the heavens toward which he proudly stretches his head, with eyes sensitive enough to signify nobility, slowness, wisdom, pride, vanity, fire.
  
  No, he is nothing like the pig.
  
  He lacks those pitiful little scurrying anxious feet.
  
  That needful flight from shame.
  
  The stoic snail is tougher than that.
  
  He is more methodical, more proud, and without 
a doubt less gluttonous than any pig — pigs after all are capricious, leaving behind one bit of food to chase after something else.
  
  That 
panicky, hurried gluttony, that fear of missing out on something — that’s not for the snail.
  
  Nothing could be more beautiful than that deliberate and discreet advance.
  
  What it must cost them to glide so perfectly along the earth they honor with their presence! Each is like a ship trailing its silver wake.
  
  They proceed with a majesty that is all the more complete when you consider again the vulnerability of those highly sensitive eyeballs.
  
  Is the anger of snails perceptible?
  
  What examples can be found?
  
  As it makes no other gestures, the snail’s passion can probably only be discovered by a more profuse and rapid effusion of slime.
  
  The slime of pride.
  
  So one can see the expression of their rage is identical with that of their egotism.
  
  So they rule the world in their rich and silvery fashion.
  
  The expression of their anger, like that of their pride, shines as it dries.
  
  But it also makes the trail that reveals them to predators.
  
  What’s more, this trail is ephemeral and lasts only until the next rain.
  
  That’s how it is with everyone who speaks in an entirely subjective way, in verses and lines only, without taking care to build their phrases 
into a solid dwelling with more than two dimensions.
  
  Something more durable than themselves.
  
  But undoubtedly they don’t feel this need.
  
  They areheroes, that is to say beings whose existence alone is a work of art — not artists who merely make masterpieces.
  
  Here I touch on one of the main points of their lesson, something they have in common with all shelled beings: that shell, part of their essence, is at the same time a work of art, a monument.
  
  It lasts longer than they do.
  
  That is the example that snails offer us: saints who make masterpieces 
of their lives, works of art of their own perfection.
  
  They secrete form.
  
  Nothing outside themselves, their necessity, or their needs is their work.
  
  Nothing is out of proportion with their physical being.
  
  Nothing that is unnecessary or obligatory.
  
  And so they delineate the duties of humanity: great thoughts come from the heart.
  
  Live a better life and make better verses.
  
  Morality and rhetoric combine in the ambition and desire of the wise.
  
  How are they saints?
  
  Precisely by obedience to their nature.
  
  So: know yourself.
  
  And accept yourself for what you are.
  
  In agreement with your vices.
  
  In proportion with your measure.
  
  What is most appropriate to the human being?
  
  Words.
  
  Decency.
  
  Our humanism.
  
  Translated from the French

• The Trees Delete Themselves Inside a Fog-Sphere Read Poem Log in to favourite

  In the fog which surrounds the trees, the leaves are stripped—leaves defaced already by slow oxidation, deadened by the sap's out-seeping for flowers' and fruits' gain, since the harsh heats of August made of them a less.
  
  In the bark, vertical furrows crease and slit where dampness drains to the earth's base, indifferent to the living citizens of the trunk.
  
  Flowers scattered, fruit conferred.
  
  Since youth, this relinquishing of breathing attributes and body parts has become for the trees a standard practice.