Two Poems by Eliot Cardinaux

"your translator’s choice of words / in order to flower into language / must be laid bare"

from Bound Book of Sketches, Henry Gastineau, 1820-1876

XXIV

for Mireille Gansel

my beloved asks
what is the valence of desire
I ask you    what is the valence 
of despair    a leaf    treeless 
wanhope

if trees connote silence    life force
a bridge between them    mended
& rebuilt so many times    like a ship
of Theseus    

will the wounds come to you seeking 
lost homes in language     the long slow 
movement of the flocks    how 
will you help the word to pass
to cross the river

root systems    rhizomes    site
of the Southern liberation    nodes 
& internodes    the interstitial shock
of your revelation    land between native
tongues    the underground springs
of a people’s hinterland 
your translator’s choice of words
in order to flower into language 
must be laid bare

a branch with green leaves
carried out of a prison cell 
in Vietnam
the poems etched with a pin 
a cough    that shatters 
breathless poetry    scolding 
the silence surrounding 
so many lines you carried    
off into the borderless

is it still okay to ask when things
perhaps by now    have already begun 
to come to pass    
where the stigma of autumn burns
will anyone find these words    
insensitive    trees 
connote life    & silence
so many things that are said

XXV

the only thing sure 
is the fracture of myriad
futures    too early to tell 
your fate    but was it
vanity    to have hoped for
meaning    a ludicrous project
from the true opponent    a limitless 
courage flows into you    whether 
illness or enemy appears    
in the flesh

the apocalyptic    present 
throughout history    is not a given
it has to be searched for & won    that this 
is reality    fighting is an act
an effort    not a sign of giving up
or giving in    thank you for sharing 
the burden of hope with us    hope
is a cruel thing    not the opposite 
of despair    it’s harder
to hope    I think

invasive bird    why do you mock me
so    sing my melody back to me
make shapes of your numerous 
self    enclosed    in language
changeling    released into Central
Park because Shakespeare 
mentioned you    starling
though you are so beautiful 
still    don’t despair
my star    they destroy
while we want to live

---

Notes on XXIV:

“XXIV” is written in direct response to several chapters in Mireille Gansel’s Translation as Transhumance (Feminist Press, 2017). Those and other references are as follows.

The phrase “what is the valence of desire” is derived from the writings of South-Asian-American poet and scholar Shana Bulhan.

“A LEAF, treeless, for Bertold Brecht” is a poem by Paul Celan from Schneepart (Snowpart), collected in Breathturn into Timestead: The Collected Later Poetry: A Bilingual Edition, translated by Pierre Joris (FSG, 2014). The line “so many things that are said” is derived from Celan’s poem, which itself is derived from Bertold Brecht’s own poem “An die Nachgeborenen” (“To Those Born After”).

Gansel, who worked closely with Brecht, refers to some lines in Brecht’s poem, here translated by Ros Schwartz, in Translation as Transhumance: “What times are they, when / a talk about trees is almost a crime / because it implies silence about so many horrors?”

In her memoir, Gansel recounts reciting these lines of Brecht’s to a Vietnamese friend at the site of the Southern liberation in Vietnam during the war, citing the link between trees, and silence in the face of atrocity, as it is evinced in Brecht’s poem. She learns from her friend, however, that “for her people, the trees, the fragrance of the rice fields, of the flowers of the night, it was all part of the life forces, in no way different from commitment and resistance—quite the opposite” (Translation as Transhumance, pp. 52-53).

The lines “the long slow / movement of the flocks” and “the underground springs / of a people’s hinterland” are also taken from Translation as Transhumance, and refer more generally to the process of translation and trans-lingual poetics, from the translator’s work, alongside native speakers, of tapping into the cultural wellsprings of a given language, to her equal task of shepherding the word across national, political, societal, and cultural borders.

The line “a branch with green leaves” refers directly to Gansel’s encounter with the Vietnamese poet To Huu, who, while in prison, as she recounts on his behalf, had to resort to etching his poems onto the green leaves of a branch that was slipped into his cell by friends: “Those were my first publications, my first copies: branches, an entire branch, small, but with lots of leaves. That way, it’s public. A branch . . . A branch with green leaves! It’s innocent! Inoffensive! A branch that is both poetry and politics.”

The line “where the stigma of autumn burns” is derived from a line by Reiner Kunze, also found in Gansel’s Translation as Transhumance, therein translated by Ros Schwartz as “where the stigma(ta) of autumn burn(s),” with parentheses, presumably in order to convey Gansel’s own openly undecided effort during the process of translation.

The line “off into the borderless” is taken from the following fragment by Paul Celan, from Microliths They Are, Little Stones: Posthumous Prose, Pierre Joris, translator (Contra Mundum Press, 2020): “Poems are paradoxes. Paradoxical is the rhyme, that gathers sense and sense, sense and counter-sense: a chance meeting at a place in language-time nobody can foresee, it lets this word coincide with that other one—for how long? For a limited time: the poet, who wants to stay true to that principle of freedom which announces itself in the rhyme, now has to turn his back to the rhyme. Away from the border—or across it, off into the borderless!” (pg.88-89).

It must be noted, that many of the insights that inform this poem were orally transmitted, and aurally absorbed during a public discussion that took place between Mireille Gansel and Shoshana Olidort at Amherst College in March, 2025.

Notes on XXV:

In “XXV,” the phrase “from the true opponent, a limitless courage flows into you” is taken from Franz Kafka’s The Zürau Aphorisms, Roberto Calasso, editor (Random House, 2011).

The line “thank you for sharing the burden of hope with us” is a quote by Palestinian poet and exile Mahmoud Darwish, taken from the title essay in Bei Dao’s collection, Midnight’s Gate, Matthew Fryslie, translator; Christopher Mattison, editor (New Directions, 2005). The line “hope is a cruel thing” calls up Bei Dao’s own poem, “Cruel Hope,” from The August Sleepwalker (New Directions, 1990).

An invasive species, European Starlings were first brought to America by Shakespeare enthusiasts who wanted for the “New World” to house every species of bird mentioned in Shakespeare’s poetry and plays. The group released 100 starlings into Central Park in the 1890s (source: allaboutbirds.org). Star, German for “starling,” was the name Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gave to his own pet starling.

The lines “they destroy / while we want to live” were written by the Vietnamese poet Che Lan Vien, as quoted by Mireille Gansel, and translated into English by Ros Schwartz in Gansel’s Translation as Transhumance (Feminist Press, 2017).

---

Eliot Cardinaux is a poet, pianist, composer, and translator working at the edges of the lyric and improvised music. On the Long Blue Night (Dos Madres, 2023) examined “today” vis midcentury writers such as Paul Celan. As a new publisher and founding editor of The Bodily Press, Cardinaux has devoted the last year to producing books by poets and artists around the world.

---

---

So Far this August from The Fortnightly Review: