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Accueil > Carnets | SebMénard > La réserve > Snyder, Gary | this poem is for bear

Snyder, Gary | this poem is for bear

mardi 2 janvier 2018, par sebmenard

this poem is for bear

 « As for me I am a child of the god of the mountains »

A bear down under the cliff.
She is eating huckleberries.
They are ripe now
Soon it will snow, and she
Or maybe he, will crawl into a hole
And sleep. Ypu can see
Huckleberries in bearshit if you
Look, this time of year
If I sneak up on the bear
It will grunt and run

The others had all gone down
From the blackberry brambles, but one girl
Spilled her basket, and was picking up her
Berries in the dark.
A tall man stood in the shadow, took her arm,
Led her to his home. He was a bear.
In a house under the mountain
She gave birth to slick dark children
With sharp teeth, and lived in the hollow
Mountain many years.

snare a bear : call him out :

honey-eater
forest apple
light-foot
Old man in the fur coat, Bear ! come out !
Die of you own choice !
Grandfather black-food !

this girl married a bear

Who rules in the mountains, Bear !

you have eaten many berries
you have caught many fish
you have frightened many people

Twelve species north of Mexico
Sucking their paws in the long winter
Tearing the high-strung caches down
Whinning, crying, jacking off
(Odysseus as a bear)

Bear-cubs, gnawing the soft tits
Teeth gritted, eyes screwed tight

but she let them.

Til her brothers found the place
Chased her husband up the gorge
Cornered him in the rocks.
Song of the snared bear :

 « Give me my belt
« I am near death
« I came from the mountain caves
« At the headwaters,
« The small streams there
« Are all dried up.

— I think I’ll go hunt bears.

« hunt bears ?

Why shit Snyder,
You couldn’t hit a bear in the ass

with a handful of rice ! »


Snyder, Gary, 1978 pour l’édition américaine de Mythe ands Texts, traduction de Antoine Wyss titrée Premier chant du chaman et autres poèmes, éditions Orphée/La Différence 1992.