Stéphane Mallarmé: Pour un tombeau d’Anatole/For Anatole’s tomb :Patrick McGuinness, trans.
(first. this is not a poem, and Mallarmé did not call it anything in particular (though it calls/calls out)… Rather: “notes towards a poem.” and these: away from (the poem). Not a work in progress: progressing where? But processioning, processing. Professing. “Less something finished than something unbegun” (writes the translator). Scraps of almosts– returning again (and never) to the crux of it– oh impossible empty. Time, and Again.)
there is a time in Existence in which we will find each other again, if not a place –
– and if you doubt that the world will be the witness, supposing I live to be old enough —
une époque
où nous nous retrouverons
désolé, je ne parle pas le français. but i am drawn to equivalencies, so-called.
your future which has taken refuge in me. how can I (can I) begin to move my hands around, gesticulate the way this resonates within me. Your future :nowhere/nothing/not. Thus: your future (for ‘you,’ futureless subject, are neither either…)
Thus far: first, progress, procession, processing, -ing, finished, unbegun, almost, returning, time, again, time, again, old, future, begin, futureless.