The Lorrain Quartet, or the dynasty of wounded tongues
I. Ballade de l’exode alsacien
For my arrière-aïeux alsaciens, who moved West because they really hated the Germans, but had such a strong accent that the French presumed they were German.
A little girl cries
“Les boches nous auront pas !”
She is leaving Alsace, les boches tarderont pas,
Her brother gives her the rest of his beer,
she winces. Bientôt, he says,
she’s falling asleep.
Bientôt on arrive à Saint-Dié.
She is turning eight and she sounds strange.
La yaya. She isn’t German,
Her tormentors are wrong.
They themselves speak a crass vosgien.
L'hôpital se fout de la charité.
Au moins en Alsace on sait que les cochons,
on couche pas avec ; on les bouffe.
She sees the stone they throw at her.
It hits her nonetheless. Right in the mouth.
Her mouth morphs. Her children proclaim loudly,
“Oui, on est alsacien,” in their perfect accent lorrain
when they introduce themselves to their new university friends
in Nancy;
not Strasbourg, not Alsace.
II. Renouncing Nancy in August
When the Sun turned we were
still there in the chokehold
of our own tightest circle of Hell.
Nous en venions but we spoke in tongues.
La Meurthe a son barrage—at high tide was it you holding me back was
it me dragging you down—on ne vit pas à la mer—there was no tide.
it was us
choking in tongues.
You haunt my imagination,
I conjure your face sur la Place Stanislas,
un café en terrasse. But you are not there,
and I am not in danger.
I wouldn’t risk recognising you,
quittant le lycée, feuilletant un livre
à la librairie Didier.
The bitterness of our old tongues leaves a stain
I wash my hands but they won’t turn blue.
Si vous aviez une barbe, serait-elle bleue ?
Are you ashamed? Does it matter
who drew the first blood? Gardez notre Enfer. Moi, je pars.
III. Old Places
How long has it been?
It is so lovely to see you!
You look the same—A compliment,
of course! Familiar and comforting.
I’ve become quite the socialite—
Has it been—
five years already! Crazy.
I can’t say I speak much French
these days, there’s something so
Cosmopolitan about my new tongue.
Have you seen it—It’s blue and tentacular!
All the rage in London! Micro—
Of course I won’t—Clocks tick
too loud and fast for regrets—
Would you like a fag?
Maybe a line?
Did you hear about David Cameron
and that pig? My grandparents were from the Vosges—
Yeah, exactly! They’d get it!
Do you know—if you set me loose
in Nancy Centre—no Google Maps—
I’d hit a wall!
IV. Revenant’s Penance
There is no train home.
Mes adieux, mes aïeux—or were they merely my eyes?
Their bones were buried beneath the rails.
A word of wit worries a broken jaw;
the tongue won’t rest, the tongue won’t heal.
Tongue to tongue speaking in tongues; do the dead
speak in tongues
or do they rest
in silence in love in their native land?
My mutilated tongue licks at a metallic prayer—I turned it
to the rails to the bones in the dirt. There is no weight or wit to it.
An empty imploration,
“Rendez-moi ma langue,
rendez-moi ma Lorraine.”