Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Biography: Marilyne Bertoncini, poet, translator, critic, co-director of Recours au poème, collaborates to poetry magazines, and animates jeudidesmots.com – 14 collections and about fifteen translations published, the latest are Il Libro di Sabbia (Bertoni éd. Italy, 2022), Aub’ombre/alb’ombra (bilingual – PVST 2022), La Plume d’Ange (chemins de Plume 2022), La Noyée d’Onagawa (Jacques André , 2020, 1st prize, Quai en Poésie 2021) and Soleil Hésitant, by Gili Haimovich, (translated from English, Jacques André, 2021)
Rapunzel – our answer
Marilyne Bertoncini
Remember the ladder of her long hair coming down the tower
standing without stairs or door in the heart of a forest
The long braided hair down to the ground
which served as a ladder to reach her.
Remember Rapunzel’s song,
just like a nightingale locked in its cage
his song hoisting to the sky his thirst for freedom
his desire of life and his strength.
Ah, you can veil Rapunzel’s hair
you can cut them like the witch did
Every woman resists secretly in her heart
anticipates the gesture, throws the veil to the fire
and breathlessly sings the song of rebellion
One should never overlook the moral of the tales –
Rapunzel is Women’s Response to Oppression
And nothing stops them, these perennial rapunzels
walking together towards the future –
My sisters whose pain is the yeast of revolution.
Hair in the wind
The treetops comb the wind
the wind caresses the hair of the branches
and the fleece of the grass
The wind is free and sings
in the disheveled hair of the forests
it touches as it passes the heads of the primroses
or lingers a moment to pick up the perfume
of star jasmine on the garden wall
The wind brings to the stars the song of the earth,
it ruffles the comets, spins the planets
and the whole universe sings along with the wind
The wind is free and sings when women’s hair
are blooming flowers in the sun of life.
Atlas
On the world map
the child discovers the pretty colored shapes
of a complicated puzzle
that men call “country”.
The lines that delimit them,
men call them “borders”.
But the bird that travels the world only sees
the blue ocean and the green of the forests
And the man who looks at it
just sees one only sky
protecting all of us
with his mantle of blue.
Borders
by Marilyne Bertoncini
I like to lay my forehead against yours
feel our merging thoughts
abolishing the border of our bodies
perfect union
androgynous
unity
of the primordial orange
.
Between the world and me, the line is so thin
just a layer of epidermis
sensitive to caress
and sensitive to pain
delicate and protective
my skin against the world’s
My forehead against the thin
crystal blade of the windowpane
standing between the world and me.
My breath on the glass
draws hazy clouds,
the world is getting blurry
like a fading dream
