Dominique Hecq reading ‘ⱻ’

Cracks across the ceiling split apart like the map of a river delta. Deep greens above the blond shock of hair are trees swaying on the river bank. Their trunks are carved of lines that come alive. They spread their dark roots beneath the ship of fools as though ready to lift it aloft. The edges of the poster are frayed; the top corner is creased and stained, and at the left-hand bottom corner it has curled so that you might reach over your arm to press it aright with your thumb if you could muster the courage. Water might then flow over the tiles, grow into a torrent and engulf you into recollections of things unlived.

Outside the sandman rakes pebbles and people break seashells on the pavement, slowly turning the suburbs into littered beaches. The sun is petrified lapis lazuli. The clouds unfold their petals where parks blossom like flying carpets. Flowers and bees shine under the sky’s vault. Clumps of violets rain on the earth twinkling like precious stones. A soldier plays the harp. Another drinks from a golden cup. A young man makes stirrups with his palms and lifts his beloved up onto Pegasus. A fickle old man’s heart breaks as his son blows his own trumpet and little children scatter like stones on the path. A woman kneels, counting on her fingers grains of salt that were her ears. Odeur de mimosa. Across from the billabong, Narcissus has fallen asleep. Suddenly I hear an echo and feel your glance flying towards me.

Noli me tangere.

Memories meld with the will to forget. You burn inside with the bite of frost, cling to the crooked finger of language and disappear with the tide into the uncreated dimension of your faraway voice. The ocean floor is a nocturnal moonscape of fractured rock, but like a tree in spring it is full of blossoms with petals curled upon shadows. Now that you are excarnated you imagine yourself glowing hot pink. You smell blood. Hear the rumble of labouring ships. [1] And soon you feel teeth sinking into the unflesh of you.

Hard as it is to imagine the Aegean casting off Orfeo’s bones, now silver water trailing in the Milky Way, his piroga song beading mother of pearl. you ask what is time, here, where the sea, relentless mouth fights for breath, shade, light, feeds on night plumes tangled in a mullioned sky of sheer absence and sucks at Bass Strait’s maelstrom of swirling white, here, where fine-grained limestone slopes, foam-crowned and crumbling, wash into blowholes as twilight seeps through furrowed rock wall awnings streaked with moonshine, here, with its howling onshore gale swathed in the roar of the booming surf, with its odour of kelp, salt hops, tea tree and rumours hovering in angel hair, or is it perhaps the mist, here, curling where Eurydice’s voice will all of a sudden break through the fractal arpeggios of sandpipers and cormorants pinking the shimmering breath of the sea as the sun sweeps its golden wave, here, across time and distance and absence with salt spray whipping the red green cliff and the hooked beak of a rock eagle at the point where your face turns to stone, bone, silver water, stardust

Difficile com'è d'immaginare il Mar Egeo rigettando le ossa di Orfeo ora  l'acqua argentea trascina nella Via Lattea il suo canto di piroga che borda la madreperla vuoi sapere cos'è il tempo qui dove il mare, bocca implacabile combatte  per  fiato, ombra, luce si nutre di piume di notte aggrovigliate in un cielo con montanti buccati d'assenza e poppa il maelstrom di bianco vorticoso nello stretto di Bass, qui dove pendii calcarei a grana fine coronati di schiuma sbriciolano e irrompono in grande bucche di suggeritore mentre il crepuscolo dal canto suo vince pensiline di pietra solcata da marmoreo chiaro di luna, qui con il suo vento ululante del largo avvolto nello scatenarsi ruggente delle onde con l'odore di varech, arroche, tea tree e le sue voci che si librano in capelli d'angelo, o sara la nebbia, qui arriciata dove la voce di Euridice verrà all'improviso perforare gli arpeggi frattali di piovanelli e cormorani tingendo di rosa il respiro cangiante del mare mentre il sole infrange la sua onda d'oro, qui attraverso  il tempo, la distanza e l'assenza con spruzzi salini che sferzano la scogliera verde rosso e il becco adunco di un'aquila di roccia nell'istante in cui il tuo viso diventa pietra, ossa, acqua d'argento, polvere di stelle

Dur comme il se doit d’imaginer la mer Egée rejetant les ossements d’Orfée sitôt eau argent ondoyant dans la Voie Lactée son chant pirogue perlant la nacre tu cherches à savoir ce qu’est le temps, ici où la mer, bouche implacable happe souffle, ombre, lumière avale plumes de nuit emmêlées dans un ciel à meneaux troué d’absence et tète le maelstrom tourbillonnant de blanc à Bass Strait, ici où des versants calcaires au grain fin couronnés d’écume s’éboulent et déferlent dans de grands trous de souffleur au crépuscule qui lui gagne les marquises de pierre sillonnées de marbrures de clair de lune, ici avec son vent du large ensaché dans le grondement des vagues déchainées avec son odeur de varech, arroche, arbre à thé et ses rumeurs virevoltant dans des cheveux d’ange, ou peut-être est-ce la brume, ici frisottant là où la voix d’Eurydice viendra tout d’un soudain percer les arpèges fractals des bécasseaux et des cormorans rosant le souffle chatoyant de la mer à l’instant où le soleil déferle sa lame d’or, ici par-delà temps et distance et absence avec le brouillard salin fouettant la falaise vert rouge et le bec crochu d’un aigle taillé dans la roche à l’instant où ton visage devient pierre, os, eau argent, poussière d’étoile.

Cara E, che bello essere trasportato nella Via Lattea nell’incanto del tuo canto. Trascriverò il tuo magico viaggio tenendo te e la preziosissima ⱻ per mano e le stringerò forte a me.

Memories meld with the will to forget. You burn inside with the bite of frost, cling to the crooked finger of language and disappear with the tide into the uncreated dimension of your faraway voice. The ocean floor is a nocturnal moonscape of fractured rock, but like a tree in spring it is full of blossoms with petals curled upon shadows. Now that you are excarnated you imagine yourself glowing hot pink. You smell blood. Hear the rumble of labouring ships.1 And soon you feel teeth sinking into the unflesh of you.

We concentrate avidly on the processes. Of writing, of desirous being, of ecstasy. We concentrate a great deal on the self. We exert ourselves, and in so doing we summon the other within ourselves to a reality that is transformed. Fiction seeks its own fictional subject and memory alone does not flinch. Memory makes oneself plural, essential, like the version that foreshadows an aerial vision. Authentic as a first written draft. With each page, the necessary willingness to start over. [2]

Notes

[1] The phrase ‘the labouring ships’ is from W. B. Yeats, ‘The Sorrow of Love’, in Selected Poems, A. Norman Jeffares (ed), Macmillan, 1974, p. 17.

[2] The italicised quote is taken with permission from Nicole Brossard, ‘The Aerial Letter’, in Avant Desire: A Nicole Brossard Reader, Sina Queyras, Geneviève Robichaud and Erin Wunker (eds), Coach House, 2020, p. 78.

Translation

Translation (opens in a new window).

Dominique Hecq grew up in the French-speaking part of Belgium. She now lives on unceded sovereign Wurundjeri land, Melbourne. Hecq writes across genres and disciplines—and sometimes across tongues. Her creative works include a novel, five collections of short stories and twelve books of poetry. A runner up in the Carmel Bird Literary Digital Award, Smacked and Other Stories of Addiction is fresh off the press. The second edition of After Cage: A Composition in Word and Movement on Time and Silence has also been released (Liquid Amber Press).