Flicker

My time in Strasbourg was a striking experience in more than one way.

This poem was written during a long, rather monotonous Sciences Po lecture, and was finished by the end of those two hours. It was the icy February of 2012, when we non-natives were rapidly learning what 'cold' truly meant. The air was like iron, especially at night, and some of that temperature seeped into the verses I scribbled down that day.

But there was warmth too. I'd recently met someone who would become very special to me (an understatement there). I was concerned that I might not be communicating as well as I could, and that this was the source of misunderstandings between us. So this piece is really expressing a fierce resolve to make things work. Unlike the majority of my stuff, it was also intended as a message specifically for one person: the poem itself had to help the communication process between us.

This was the first time I'd ever worked French lines into a poem, and I was pleased to be able to get both my beloved double meanings (!) and a decent rhyme scheme out of them, as well as the rest. 

Hastily jotted in a busy lecture hall, and yet it works. It's one of the pieces I'm most proud of, and to this day I'm not sure it's not my best poem. It's up there, anyway.

FLICKER

Two towers in the night

Overlooking icy concrete

And here and there a light

To make an urban scene complete.

That's me and that's you, out there

And if we carry a torch for each other

I do not know, so unaware

I hold it high and murmur –

See this lover.

But to flicker its light is leaning

And I can't guarantee

Full safety or semblance of meaning

In light that comes from me.

So I want you to know I apologise

Turning my collar to the functional frost

It's not worth our time to eulogise

For the dead souls of sense that have just been lost.

And will it flicker out, or on?

On. On. Don't ask me again

There are good things in life and this plays its part

And don't remember the end

So this will stay as treatment for the tired heart.

This light's no clearer in the writing

I cannot tell if you can understand

The cold will pull me back to lighting

My message-lamp to flicker, never fail

At my hand.

Et maintenant, il faut tirer au clair pour toi

Dans une autre langue mes vers – au moins puis-je faire ça.

Nous sommes les tours

Les lumières sont nos mots d'amour

Béton, gel, et confusion

Égalent à peu près

La même chose

Les uns viennent en blocs, les autres en ondes

Mais dans ce poème ils se correspondent.

 

Et alors j'abandonne

Un peu les rimes

Pour te dire que nos lumières vont continuer

À briller

Pendant tout le temps qu'il nous faut

Pour vaincre ces vacillements

Ce qui va arriver –

Petit chat

Faut pas t'inquiéter

Sur ça.

Thanks to: Laura Marling for Flicker And Fail, Simon & Garfunkel for The Sound Of Silence, and Jacques Prévert for Rappelle-Toi Barbara.