Collected Poems in English and French Read online

  Works by Samuel Beckett published by Grove Press

  COLLECTED POEMS IN ENGLISH AND FRENCH

  COLLECTED SHORTER PLAYS

  (All That Fall, Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II, Krapp's Last Tape, Rough for Theatre I, Rough For Theatre II, Embers, Rough for Radio I, Rough for Radio II, Words and Music, Cascando, Play, Film, The Old Tune, Come and Go, Eh Joe, Breath, Not I, That Time, Footfalls, Ghost Trio, … but the clouds …, A Piece of Monologue, Rockaby, Ohio Impromptu, Quad, Catastrophe, Nacht and Träume, What Where)

  COMPLETE SHORT PROSE: 1929–1989

  (Assumption, Sedendo et Quiescendo, Text, A Case in a Thousand, First Love, The Expelled, The Calmative. The End, Texts for Nothing 1–13, From an Abandoned Work, The Image, All Strange Away, Imagination Dead Imagine, Enough, Ping, Lessness, The Lost Ones, Fizzles 1–8, Heard in the Dark 1, Heard in the Dark 2, One Evening, As the story was told, The Cliff, neither, Stirrings Still, Variations on a “Still” Point, Faux Départs, The Capital of the Ruins)

  DISJECTA:

  Miscellaneous Writings and a Dramatic Fragment

  ENDGAME AND ACT WITHOUT WORDS

  HAPPY DAYS

  HOW IT IS

  I CAN'T GO ON, I'll GO ON:

  A Samuel Beckett Reader

  KRAPP'S LAST TAPE (All That Fall, Embers, Act Without Words I, Act Without Words II)

  MERCIER AND CAMIER

  MOLLOY

  MORE PRICKS THAN KICKS

  (Dante and the Lobster, Fingal, Ding-Dong, A Wet Night, Love and Lethe, Walking Out, What a Misfortune, The Smeraldina's Billet Doux, Yellow, Draff)

  MURPHY

  NOHOW ON (Company, III Seen III Said, Worstward Ho)

  PROUST

  STORIES AND TEXTS FOR NOTHING

  (The Expelled, The Calmative, The End, Texts for Nothing 1–13)

  THREE NOVELS (Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable)

  WAITING FOR GODOT

  WATT

  HAPPY DAYS:

  Production Notebooks

  WAITING FOR GODOT:

  Theatrical Notebooks

  Copyright © 1977 by Samuel Beckett

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published simultaneously in Canada

  Collected Poems in English and French first published by John Calder (Publishers) Ltd, London 1977

  Whoroscope first published by Nancy Cuard, The Hours Press, 1930

  Echo's Bones first published by George Reavey, Europa Press, 1935

  Gnome first published 1934

  Ooftish first published 1938

  Home Olga first published 1934

  All other English poems except the last three English poems in this volume first published by John Calder (Publishers) Ltd 1961, the last three first published in this volume 1977. Poems in French first published by Limes Verlag Wiesbaden under the title Gedichte 1959 and by Editions de Minuit, Paris under the title Poèmes 1968

  Translations from Paul Eluard first published by This Quarter, Paris 1932

  Translation from Arthur Rimbaud first published by Whitenights Press, Reading 1976

  Translation from Guillaume Apollinaire first published by Dolman Press, Dublin and Calder & Boyars, London 1972

  Translations from Sébastien Chamfort first published by The Blue Guitar, Messina 1975

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 77–77855

  ISBN: 9780802198440

  Grove Press

  841 Broadway

  New York, NY 10003

  00 01 10 9 8 7 6

  CONTENTS

  Publishers' Foreword

  Part I: Poems in English

  1. Whoroscope

  2. Gnome

  3. Home Olga

  4. Echo's Bones

  The Vulture

  Enueg I

  Enueg II

  Alba

  Dortmunder

  Sanies I

  Sanies II

  Serena I

  Serena II

  Serena III

  Malacoda

  Da Tagte Es

  Echo's Bones

  5. Six Poems

  Cascando

  Ooftish

  Saint Lô

  dread nay

  Roundelay

  thither

  Part II: Poems in French with some translations

  1. Poèmes 1937–1939

  elles viennent

  they come

  à elle l'acte calme

  être là sans mâchoires sans dents

  Ascension

  La Mouche

  musique de l'indifférence

  bois seul

  ainsi a-t-on beau

  Rue de Vaugirard

  Dieppe

  Dieppe

  Arènes de Lutèce

  jusque dans la caverne ciel et sol

  2. Six Poèmes 1947–1949

  bon bon il est un pays

  Mort de A.D.

  vive morte ma seule saison

  je suis ce cours de sable qui glisse

  my way is in the sand flowing

  que ferais-je sans ce monde

  what would I do without this world

  je voudrais que mon amour meure

  I would like my love to die

  3. Poème 1974

  hors crâne seul dedans

  something there

  Part III: Translations from French with the originals

  1. From Paul Eluard

  L'amoureuse

  Lady Love

  A perte de vue dans le sens de mon corps

  Out of Sight in the Direction of my Body

  A peine défigurée

  Scarcely Disfigured

  Seconde nature

  Second Nature

  La vue

  Scene

  L'univers–solitude

  Universe-Solitude

  Confections

  Confections

  2. From Arthur Rimbaud

  Le bateau ivre

  Drunken Boat

  3. From Guillaume Apollinaire

  Zone

  Zone

  4. From Sébastien Chamfort

  Huit maximes

  Long after Chamfort

  Le sot

  Wit in fools

  Le théâtre tragique

  The trouble with tragedy

  Quand on soutient que les gens

  Better on your arse

  Quand on a été bien tourmenté

  Live and clean forget

  La pensée console

  Ask of all-healing

  L'espérance

  Hope

  Vivre est une maladie

  Sleep till death

  Que le coeur de l'homme

  How hollow heart

  Notes

  FOREWORD

  This is the most complete collection of poems that Mr. Beckett authorized. It contains all the work published in English before 1977 with the addition of prewar poems and some later ones. The complete French poems are included in the original by arrangement with Les Editions de Minuit, and six of them have been translated by the author. The first one originated in English. The last section contains those translations from French poets that Samuel Bec
kett agreed to see republished, most of them commissioned by little magazines before World War II, although the Chamfort maxims came later. The translation of Le Bateau Ivre was long lost before miraculously turning up in private hands as is explained in the Notes.

  The translation made by Samuel Beckett of an anthology of Mexican poetry compiled by Octavio Paz, first published in 1959, is not included here, but is separately available from Grove Press in an edition entitled Mexican Poetry. Other translations, many unsigned, made during the thirties with which Mr. Beckett was unsatisfied, exist in old magazines, but he did not want to see them reissued in book form.

  The Publishers

  PART I

  POEMS IN ENGLISH

  1. WHOROSCOPE

  Whoroscope

  What's that?

  An egg?

  By the brothers Boot it stinks fresh.

  Give it to Gillot.

  Galileo how are you

  and his consecutive thirds!

  The vile old Copernican lead-swinging son of a sutler!

  We're moving he said we're off—Porca Madonna!

  the way a boatswain would be, or a sack-of-potatoey

  charging Pretender.

  That's not moving, that's moving. 10

  What's that?

  A little green fry or a mushroomy one?

  Two lashed ovaries with prostisciutto?

  How long did she womb it, the feathery one?

  Three days and four nights?

  Give it to Gillot.

  Faulhaber, Beeckman and Peter the Red,

  come now in the cloudy avalanche or Gassendi's sun-red

  crystally cloud

  and I'll pebble you all your hen-and-a-half ones

  or I'll pebble a lens under the quilt in the midst of day. 20

  To think he was my own brother, Peter the Bruiser,

  and not a syllogism out of him

  no more than if Pa were still in it.

  Hey! pass over those coppers,

  sweet millèd sweat of my burning liver!

  Them were the days I sat in the hot-cupboard throwing

  Jesuits out of the skylight.

  Who's that? Hals?

  Let him wait.

  My squinty doaty!

  I hid and you sook. 30

  And Francine my precious fruit of a house-and-parlour

  foetus!

  What an exfoliation!

  Her little grey flayed epidermis and scarlet tonsils!

  My one child

  scourged by a fever to stagnant murky blood—

  blood!

  Oh Harvey belovèd

  how shall the red and white, the many in the few, (dear bloodswirling Harvey)

  eddy through that cracked beater? 40

  And the fourth Henry came to the crypt of the arrow.

  What's that?

  How long?

  Sit on it.

  A wind of evil flung my despair of ease

  against the sharp spires of the one

  lady:

  not once or twice but. …

  (Kip of Christ hatch it!)

  in one sun's drowning 50

  (Jesuitasters please copy).

  So on with the silk hose over the knitted, and the morbid

  leather—

  what am I saying! the gentle canvas—

  and away to Ancona on the bright Adriatic,

  and farewell for a space to the yellow key of the

  Rosicrucians.

  They don't know what the master of them that do did,

  that the nose is touched by the kiss of all foul and sweet air,

  and the drums, and the throne of the faecal inlet,

  and the eyes by its zig-zags.

  So we drink Him and eat Him 60

  and the watery Beaune and the stale cubes of Hovis

  because He can jig

  as near or as far from His Jigging Self

  and as sad or lively as the chalice or the tray asks.

  How's that, Antonio?

  In the name of Bacon will you chicken me up that egg.

  Shall I swallow cave-phantoms?

  Anna Maria!

  She reads Moses and says her love is crucified.

  Leider! Leider! she bloomed and withered, 70

  a pale abusive parakeet in a mainstreet window.

  No I believe every word of it I assure you.

  Fallor, ergo sum!

  The coy old frôleur!

  He tolle'd and legge'd

  and he buttoned on his redemptorist waistcoat.

  No matter, let it pass.

  I'm a bold boy I know

  so I'm not my son

  (even if I were a concierge) 80

  nor Joachim my father's

  but the chip of a perfect block that's neither old nor new,

  the lonely petal of a great high bright rose.

  Are you ripe at last,

  my slim pale double-breasted turd?

  How rich she smells,

  this abortion of a fledgling!

  I will eat it with a fish fork.

  White and yolk and feathers.

  Then I will rise and move moving 90

  toward Rahab of the snows,

  the murdering matinal pope-confessed amazon,

  Christina the ripper.

  Oh Weulles spare the blood of a Frank

  who has climbed the bitter steps,

  (René du Perron… .!)

  and grant me my second

  starless inscrutable hour.

  1930

  NOTES

  René Descartes, Seigneur du Perron, liked his omelette made of eggs hatched from eight to ten days; shorter or longer under the hen and the result, he says, is disgusting.

  He kept his own birthday to himself so that no astrologer could cast his nativity.

  The shuttle of a ripening egg combs the warp of his days.

  P. 1, l. 3 In 1640 the brothers Boot refuted Aristotle in Dublin.

  4 Descartes passed on the easier problems in analytical geometry to his valet Gillot.

  5–10 Refer to his contempt for Galileo Jr., (whom he confused with the more musical Galileo Sr.), and to his expedient sophistry concerning the movement of the earth.

  17 He solved problems submitted by these mathematicians.

  P. 2, l. 21–26 The attempt at swindling on the part of his elder brother Pierre de la Bretaillière—The money he received as a soldier.

  27 Franz Hals.

  29–30 As a child he played with a little cross-eyed girl.

  31–35 His daughter died of scarlet fever at the age of six.

  37–40 Honoured Harvey for his discovery of the circulation of the blood, but would not admit that he had explained the motion of the heart.

  41 The heart of Henri iv was received at the Jesuit college of La Flèche while Descartes was still a student there.

  P. 3, l. 45–53 His visions and pilgrimage to Loretto.

  56–65 His Eucharistic sophistry, in reply to the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld, who challenged him to reconcile his doctrine of matter with the doctrine of transubstantiation.

  68 Schurmann, the Dutch blue-stocking, a pious pupil of Voët, the adversary of Descartes.

  P. 4, l. 73–76 Saint Augustine has a revelation in the shrubbery and reads Saint Paul.

  77–83 He proves God by exhaustion.

  91–93 Christina, queen of Sweden. At Stockholm, in November, she required Descartes, who had remained in bed till midday all his life, to be with her at five o'clock in the morning.

  94 Weulles, a Peripatetic Dutch physician at the Swedish court, and an enemy of Descartes.

  2. GNOME

  Gnome

  Spend the years of learning squandering

  Courage for the years of wandering

  Through a world politely turning

  From the loutishness of learning.

  1934

  3. HOME OLGA

  Home Olga

  J might be made sit up for a jade of hope (an
d exile,

  don't you know)

  And Jesus and Jesuits juggernauted in the haemorrhoidal

  isle,

  Modo et forma anal maiden, giggling to death in stomacho.

  E for the erythrite of love and silence and the sweet noo

  style,

  Swoops and loops of love and silence in the eye of the sun

  and view of the mew,

  Juvante Jah and a Jain or two and the tip of a friendly

  yiddophile.

  O for an opal of faith and cunning winking adieu, adieu,

  adieu.

  Yesterday shall be tomorrow, riddle me that my rapparee.

  Che sarà sarà che fu, there's more than Homer knows how

  to spew,

  Exempli gratia: ecce himself and the pickthank agnus

  —e.o.o.e.

  1932

  4. ECHO'S BONES

  The Vulture

  dragging his hunger through the sky

  of my skull shell of sky and earth

  stooping to the prone who must

  soon take up their life and walk

  mocked by a tissue that may not serve

  till hunger earth and sky be offal

  Enueg I

  Exeo in a spasm

  tired of my darling's red sputum

  from the Portobello Private Nursing Home

  its secret things

  and toil to the crest of the surge of the steep perilous bridge

  and lapse down blankly under the scream of the hoarding

  round the bright stiff banner of the hoarding

  into a black west

  throttled with clouds.

  Above the mansions the algum-trees

  the mountains

  my skull sullenly

  clot of anger

  skewered aloft strangled in the cang of the wind