poem by marguerite duras
translation + adaptation (eng-fr) by dalem
Caesarea
Caesarea
how is the place called
Césarée
Caesarea
nothing left but the memory of history
and this only word to call it
Caesarea
totality.
nothing but the place
and the word.
the ground.
it is white.
marble dust
melding to sea sand.
pain.
the intolerable.
the pain of their severance.
Ceaesarea
the place was called still.
Césarée.
Caesarea.
the place is flat
face to the ocean
the ocean at the end of its race
eroding the ruins
always strong
there, now, face to the other continent
yet.
blue of the blue marble columns thrown
there face to the port.
all destroyed.
all has been destroyed.
Césarée
Caesarea
captured.
kidnapped.
taken into exile in the roman ship,
the queen of Jewry,
the woman queen of Samaria.
for him.
him.
the criminal
he who destroyed the temple at Jerusalem.
and later denied.
the place is still called
Césarée
Caesarea.
the end of the sea
the sea caressing against the deserts
nothing left but history
the all.
nothing but this marble gravel under the
steps
this dust.
and the blue from the drowned columns.
the sea won over the land of Caesarea.
the streets of Caesarea were narrow,
obscure.
their freshness offered places under the sun
the arrival of ships
caravan dust
inside these dust clouds
we can see yet, yet we read the thought
of the people from the land of Caesarea
the blueprints of the streets of the people of Caesarea.
she, the queen of Jewry.
returned there.
denied.
cast out
for state matters
returns to Caesarea.
the sea journey inside the
roman ship.
thrashed by the intolerable pain from being denied
by him, the criminal of the temple.
at the bottom of the ship she rests over the white linens
of mourning.
the painful news revealed and open over the world.
the place was called Caesarea.
Cesarea.
to the north, the lake of Tiberiade, the great caravans of St. John of Acre.
between the lake and the sea, Judaea, Galilaea.
all around banana trees, corn fields, orange groves
the wheat of Galilaea.
to the south Jerusalem, towards the Orient, Asia,
the deserts.
she was very young, twenty-three,
twenty-seven,
two thousand years
he took her.
denied by state matters.
the senate spoke about the dangers of such love.
torn from him
torn from the desire of him
one dies.
in the morning face to the village,
the roman ship.
mute chalk white she appears.
shameless.
through the sky a burst of
ashes
over the villages named Pompeii, Herculanum
dead.
she needs to destroy everything.
one dies.
the place is called Césarée
Caesarea
nothing else to see.
but the all.
a bad summer over Paris.
cold. and fog.