Longwise Jean
La pluie tomba latéralement à ma naissance;
elle ressembla à des arbres pliés par le vent
qui poussent sur les hautes montagnes:
la pluie, presque parallèle à l'horizon;
on s'accrocha toujours au chapeau,
alors on perdit de nombreux parapluies!
Ohé! Il y eut un fleuve le long de l'horizon,
et mes parents m'appelèrent Longwise Jean:
je vois le monde à ma manière privée.
When I was young, I was a hunter
and one day I traded my skins for whisky;
when I awoke, I said
Oh, friends! Where is my gun?
They laughed, said "You drank it!"
I said then
Oh, men! Where is my knife?
They said I used it to buy drink.
I said then
Oh, devils! Where are my furs...
my wife's furs
my children's furs invested...
my shirt? my cheman... canoe?
Il y a un nouveau dieu en ville, m'amis.
soleil caché, lune cachée,
enfin un Dieu caché...
combien de temps faut-il
pour réussir l'archéologie?
--
The rain fell sideways at my birth;
it looked like trees bent by the wind
that grow on high mountains:
rain, almost parallel to the horizon;
people always held on to their hats
and they lost a number of umbrellas!
Hey! There was a river along the horizon,
and my parents called me Longwise John:
I see the world in my own way.
(english)
There is a new God in town, friends.
hidden sun, hidden moon,
and finally a hidden God.
How long will it take for
Archaeology to succed ?
( i.e., in recovering the old, previous God, sun, moon, etc.)
--
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notes
I wrote this in the Passe Simplé tense of the verb in order to give an archaic and stilted sound to what is apparently a spoken discourse. The actions are old and long finished.
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