is my existence
abnormal ?
there are days when
i break because
i am made to
hate myself
it isn't right
the pain is too great
this pain is strength
but this strength
is pain
i just want to be
okay .

Renee Vivien Translations


Song
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

When the moon weeps,
illuminating flowers on the graves of the faithful,
my memories creep
back to you, wrapped in flightless wings.

It's getting late; soon we will sleep
(your eyes already half closed)
steeped
in the shimmering air.

O, the agony of burning roses:
your forehead discloses
a heavy despondency,
though your hair floats lightly ...

In the night sky the stars burn whitely
as the Goddess nightly
resurrects flowers that fear the sun
and die before dawn ...



Undine
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Kim Cherub (an alias of Michael R. Burch)

Your laughter startles, your caresses rake.
Your cold kisses love the evil they do.
Your eyes―blue lotuses drifting on a lake.

Lilies are less pallid than your face.

You move like water parting.
Your hair falls in rootlike tangles.
Your words like treacherous rapids rise.
Your arms, flexible as reeds, strangle,

Choking me like tubular river reeds.
I shiver in their enlacing embrace.
Drowning without an illuminating moon,
I vanish without a trace,

lost in a nightly swoon.



Amazone
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch  

the Amazon smiles above the ruins
while the sun, wearied by its struggles, droops to sleep.
******’s aroma swells Her nostrils;
She exults in blood, death’s inscrutable lover.

She loves lovers who intoxicate Her
with their wild agonies and proud demises.
She despises the cloying honey of feminine caresses;
cups empty of horror fail to satisfy Her.

Her desire, falling cruelly on some wan mouth
from which she rips out the unrequited kiss,
awaits ardently lust’s supreme spasm,
more beautiful and more terrible than the spasm of love.

NOTE: The French poem has “coups” and I considered various words – “cuts,” “coups,” “coups counted,” etc. – but I thought because of “intoxicate” and “honey” that “cups” worked best in English.



“Nous nous sommes assises” (“We Sat Down”)
by Renée Vivien
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Darling, we were like two exiles
bearing our desolate souls within us.

Dawn broke more revolting than any illness...

Neither of us knew the native language
As we wandered the streets like strangers.
The morning’s stench, so oppressive!

Yet you shone like the sunrise of hope...

                     *

As night fell, we sat down,
Your drab dress grey as any evening,
To feel the friendly freshness of kisses.

No longer alone in the universe,
We exchanged lovely verses with languor.

Darling, we dallied, without quite daring to believe,
And I told you: “The evening is far more beautiful than the dawn.”

You nudged me with your forehead, then gave me your hands,
And I no longer feared uncertain tomorrows.

The sunset sashayed off with its splendid insolence,
But no voice dared disturb our silence...

I forgot the houses and their inhospitality...

The sunset dyed my mourning attire purple.

Then I told you, kissing your half-closed eyelids:
“Violets are more beautiful than roses.”

Darkness overwhelmed the horizon...

Harmonious sobs surrounded us...

A strange languor subdued the strident city.

Thus we savored the enigmatic hour.

Slowly death erased all light and noise,
Then I knew the august face of the night.

You let the last veils slip to your naked feet...
Then your body appeared even nobler to me, dimly lit by the stars.

Finally came the appeasement of rest, of returning to ourselves...
And I told you: “Here is the height of love…”

We who had come carrying our desolate souls within us,
like two exiles, like complete strangers.



Renée Vivien (1877-1909) was a British poet who wrote primarily in French. She was one of the last major poets of Symbolism. Her work included sonnets, hendecasyllabic verse and prose poetry. Born Pauline Mary Tarn in London to a British father and American mother, she grew up in Paris and London. Upon inheriting her father's fortune at age 21, she emigrated permanently to France. In Paris, her dress and lifestyle were as notorious as her verse. She lived lavishly as an open lesbian, sometimes dressing in men's clothes, while harboring a lifelong obsession for her closest childhood friend, Violet Shillito (a relationship that apparently remained unconsummated). Her obsession with violets led to Vivien being called the "Muse of the Violets." But in 1900 Vivien abandoned this chaste love to engage in a public affair with the American writer and heiress Natalie Clifford Barney. The following year Shillito died of typhoid fever, a tragedy from which Vivien never fully recovered. Vivien later had a relationship with a baroness to whom she considered herself to be married, even though the baroness had a husband and children. During her adventurous life, Vivien indulged in alcohol, drugs, fetishes and sadomasochism. But she grew increasingly frail and by the time of her death she weighed only 70 pounds, quite possibly dying from the cumulative effects of anorexia, alcoholism and drug abuse.

Keywords/Tags: Renee Vivien, lesbian, gay, LBGT, love, love and art, French, translation, translations, France, cross-dresser, symbolic, symbolist, symbolism, image, images, imagery, metaphor, metamorphose, metaphysical

you’re just a boy, everyone says, but no one gets it like you do. be responsible, everyone says, but no one knows just how responsible you can be. don’t be cruel, everyone says, but they don’t know cruelty like you do, because you’re just a boy and boys use their fists more than their mouths, don’t they? don’t you? because fists (fists, whitened knuckles, dry skin, salty and sad) fists can hurt a lot, but mouths (mouths, bloodied red, bitten raw, bittersweet) mouths shatter hearts, ruin lives, push you down and tie you up, bare and defenceless, suffocating, rumours and confessions like bullets — and boys aren’t that cruel, are they? are you? (even if you are cruel, you are unarmed. you use your fists because you don’t know how to use your mouth, not like this, anyway.) you should know your way, everyone says, but you’re just a boy and all what boys do is get lost over and over again. you walk with your feathers puffed like a peacock, hips swaying like a courtesan, eyes staring ahead as if you’re too good to see humans, too holy for humanity, or as if there’s a place you’re aiming to reach, a destination dancing in your head. but in reality, you are lost. your confidence is an act, your puffed feathers are a mask, and you’re sitting in the lap of the gods pretending you’re right where you want to be when all you want to do — all you truly want, deep down — is to go back home, back to your mother’s lap, back to your sister’s arms, back to your father’s fists.

whatever.

you’re just a boy, and you act like you’re a king because you’re possessive and a natural leader; you want to be rich and have pretty things and be listened to. and you **** like a god because nothing satisfies you like being worshipped with sinful mouths and soft touches. and you fight like an animal because once you’re angry, you don’t hold back, and once you feel threatened, you jump with your paws out and your sharp whites bared, and you don’t give up until someone wraps their arms around your chest and pulls you back and holds you tight, until the wild drumming of your heart ceases into a soft, melodic rhythm, until the adrenaline dies down and the craze to spill blood turns into a crave to be held. (to be loved.) and you cry, but you don’t let anyone see you but yourself even though watching your tears fall only makes them fall harder, the same way young little boys sit behind behind their windows and watch the rain punch the invulnerable glass, and realise that it will only keep pouring down more and more as long as they keep their eyes on it. because the sky loves attention, so she rains more when you’re attentive and awaiting her to change, and you love attention, so you cry more at watching yourself in the mirror and at the mere thought of someone walking in and seeing you, in all your glory, a king and a god and a beast, lying on the ground in the middle of a pool of his own tears, his walls wrecked down and his doors wide open, hinges ripped off.

you’re just a boy. you want them to cut you some slack, but why is it harder for you than everyone else?

to love a person, is a risk
rejecting this risk, means to
reject love -- what does this mean?

i love a girl called milly
she likes her cousin and
sometimes, i'm scared

imagining her soft skin
these hands, touchin
anotha dude; FUCKK!

but i be good, my friendz
cause i called popz
his old voice calmed me

my popz has become a real
friend by now; he's experienced
listen to dem old ones

you be good, too..

From where should I start to speak, this story's mountain path or its peak? What does it matter, where it be? I pray that these words may be what I wish that I could be: Free.

O Mother dear, O Mother fair, you must know this is not my way; and yet to differ you would say. Your words still ring in my ears: "What are my intentions?" They are clear, my heart cries out but no one ever listens to hear; so I offer up my silent prayer. As a soldier, I will march on; with bleeding scars beneath my spotless battle gear.

And O Father dear, you have no pride, yes, but what of shame? At the thought I could be gay, you suddenly have a son, whom you wish to call and care. I pay no heed with whom you lay, so may this kindness not be repaid? For kindness and compassion you cast blame, those two- those two are humans first, so call them by their names. I will choose my friends, whom I dare, they are not yours to take away.

Now I understand, people talk and talk they may dare. But life is just so much better when you don't care, of people, or what they say. I know what I am at the end of the day.

People smile, while they ask: "Are you okay?" And I smile in kind, then pleasantly reply. "I can't complain or whine." And that is my daily lie; an illusion of happiness for the pain to hide.

I scream out but no one hears, so to You, Father God I offer my silent prayer.  Give me strength for each new day; lest the real me fades away. And please, could you stop these tears, it's kind of hard to type a prayer in the rain.

Your wrong,
They say, using a few words to sharpen
The knife of cruelty.

You’re wrong,
They say, pressing the blade against
the thin string of life that holds me.  

You are wrong,
They say, using a few sentences in a book
The symbol of rebirth turning into
damnation.

You are so wrong,
They say, pressing their lies and wrapping
The noose around thin scared necks.

You are not wrong
Your heart says, clinging to the ones that give you life.
The one that keeps life in your scared lungs.

You are right,
Your love says, holding you close in the dark night
The shield from the rest of the worlds damnation.  

You’re right,
Your soul says, clinging to love
The light that guides you away from the cliff.

Your right,
Those who love you say, holding warmth in their hearts.
The one that loves you the way you are.

Love is love
and nothing they say can take that away.

i never understood the phrase
home is where the heart is
until i was shaking on the floor of
my hospital room and it was nothing
but walls
and even when i found the energy to
decorate with cliché little things
like fairy lights, posters, my
skeletal “art”
i felt the room swallow me whole
until i was nothing but a grain of sand
my new roommate was a wrinkly zucchini-girl
and i tried not to speak to her
but we heard each other cry in the night
and we never said a word
but i could feel her eyes on me
a girl down the hall
heard me talking about my addiction and
she told me she would pray for me
later that day she pushed me
into a wall and pressed her
lips against mine
then told me i was tempting her,
i was a sin
just waiting to happen
so i sat in the dark outside her room every
night before i went to sleep
and sometimes she would
come out
and hold my hands
and tell me she loved me

I want to come out.
I want to walk out and slam the door behind me
with whatever variation of a rainbow flag
billowing in the wind as I walk past.

I want to be out.
I want to be me and do so shamelessly
without fear of judgement or dislike
from people who may disagree

I wish I was out.
But I don't even know what I am
I want be yours and yours alone,
but there's no flag for that

I wish I was yours...
you have my mind and body and soul
but I'm just here on the side,
because you are still hers.