Miettes 2014

 

Miettes 1 (Anglais a Français)

 
Don’t spit on La France
Le comble du génie français authentique est de savoir garder une cigarette allumée jusqu’au bout sans se brûler les lèvres. Aujourd’hui, j’ai regardé un homme allongé sur un banc avec une clope au bec. A la fin de sa prestation vaporeuse, quand le mégot s’est désintégré, j’ai crié, ‘Bravo’ ! Il a craché, ‘Merci’.

The pecking order
 
Quand le grain est dans le sol
l'oiseau le ramasse et s’envole.
 
What the butterfly said to the rat
 
Toi, tu décortiques la vie, moi, je l'effleure.
 
Litote
 
Une litote d’irlandais est un exagération qui cache une discrétion.
 
Lambada
 
La maison se pavane comme une marionnette déhanchée
 
One way or two-way
 
L’amour est a sens-unique, le complicité est un aller-retours
 
The other way around 
 
Marie Curie est Mata Hari. Ou est-ce l’inverse ?
 
My French defence
 
Je suis un muet. Ma prononciation est parfait.   
 
The need for a Head
 
Non, non. Pas la guillotine, svp. Le corps a besoin du chapeau.
 
See-through
         
Les méchants sont opaques, les saintes diaphanes 
 
The Wisdom
         
Je suis trop âgé pour une idée fixe.
 
For Ana
 
Les enfants grandissent.
Le chien reste le même.
 
Tic-Toc
 
La vie est
un contre le montre.
 
Maladie d’Amour
 
La cure contre d’amour
est la haine.
 
Me, Sarkozy
 
 Une marionnette qui perd ses cordes
 
Ernest Herbeck
 
‘La pluie est la gouttière qui mène ā la nature’
 
Consile de Belarga
 
Tu garde le Bel
et largue le Gar,
dit Monsieur Un Tel
ā Madame J'en Ai Mare.
 
Unconscious
 
Je parle francaise par megarde
 
Wisdom from Yves Bonnefoy
 
Un souvenir est un voix brise. On l'entend mal, memi si on se penche. et portant on ecoute et si longtemps. Que parfois la vie passe. Et que la mort. Deja dit non a toute metaphore.
 
Not Rilke
 
La lune cette soir est grignotė. Les anges ont un petit creux.

 

Miettes 2 (French to English)

 
Sens unique ou aller retour
 
Love is a one-way street. Friendship is a return ticket. 
 
Devinette
 
Marie Curie is Mata Hari. Or is it the other way round? 
 
Sagesse
 
I’m too old for a fixed idea.
 
La cure
 
The cure for love
is hate.
 
Par megarde
 
I’m speaking French when I don’t know it.
 
Yves Bonnefoy
 
‘A memory is a broken voice, one makes it out with difficulty, even if you lean forward, and yet one listens, even for an extended period. Sometimes life passes, and death. Already say no to all metaphor.’
 
Montaigne
 
‘A man who fears suffering is already suffering’.
 
  

Miettes 3 (English to English)

   
Haydn on Critics
 
‘There was nobody in the household (of Count Esterhazy)
to confuse me. And so I was forced to become original’ 
 
Honest
 
I find Sylvia Plath irritating and Ted Hughes boring.
What does that make me?
 
Prudence
 
In a small town hurt feelings hurt the hurter.
 
Truth telling
 
It was so obvious
you couldn’t call it a lie.
 
Mon Foi
 
Earthquakes move mountains.
What about faith?
You’ve got to believe it.
 
Dirty Linen
 
The new National Front mayor of Beziėr banned
washing on the balcony. He will allow a clean
tricolour. 
 
President Pays Bas (Holland)
 
has become President Pas Facile (Not Easy).
 
Reducing unemployment was to be the test of
his competence, but it keeps rising.
The Gertrude Stein’s solution is worth trying:
resume the French tradition of building
and demolishing monuments.
 
Ancient Professions
 
Philosophers sell their minds for money, sportsmen their bodies.
 
The Bad Penny
 
No need to read Nietzsche to understand the concept of the ‘Eternal Return’. I embody it.
 
The privatisation of mendicants
 
Norway passed a law banning begging in public. Presumably you beg in private in the comfort of your home.
 
The Queen’s Visit (to Ulster)
 
McGuiness wouldn’t be the first hand
with blood on it that she shook. 
 
Obama, Man of Synthetic Straw
 
‘I believe in America
with every fibre of my being.’
 
Wake up call
 
Did you sleep well ?
I don’t know. I was asleep.
 
Actors on Football World Cup stage
 
Injuries are the thing. Are the players acting up or performing for real?
Will the referee punish them with a red card, or applaud them with an ambulance?
The doctors will be the critics. But you’re going to have to wait till tomorrow. Meanwhile sit, and suffer by proxy.
 
Shoot-out
 
Typically a Hummel scored Germany’s winning goal.
 
French Poetry
 
Verlaine doesn’t sound right with a French accent.
 
Mussolini
 
‘Journalists are the best fiction writers in this age of nightmares’
 
New World Order
 
Americans lead with their teeth. Everybody else sucks their gums. 
 
Gaza
 
The Israelis have weapons of mass destruction. The Palestinians bodies.
 
Squatter’s Rights
 
Roman Law (Uti Possidetis) states that if you are in possession, the dispossessed have no rights. It still prevails. For instance, America’s indigenous people, and the Palestinians. No wonder those in possession support one another unconditionally.   
 
 Rough Justice
 
‘What have you done?’ on balance is better than ‘What have I done’. Guilt shared leads to murder. 
 
‘Revise continues’
 
Unlike life, writing is endless.  I spin and unravel, unravel and spin. I await the snip of the scissors.
 
My O My
 
Meanwhile as my heart beats in my body I’d like to think my soul flaps its wings in my writing.   
 
Dark Thought
 
When you were alive just talking with you put things in perspective. Now I have only the night to counsel me.