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Still Together, the last collection of poems published during his lifetime, Bonafulle (1923-2016), one of France's most important poets of the 20th century, contains works written by him at different times, both branched and prose.
Although still strongly speculative and philosophical, the themes of these works are more intimate and bear the imprint of personal life experiences than in his previous poems.
Bonafua
Lyrical passages unfold beneath the strange light and brilliant colors of his spiritual world, reflecting the inextricable connection between him and his relatives, friends and childhood home. In particular, the prose poems in the last part of the book, "A Night Walk", are inspired by the author's accidental visit to the summer house where he lived in his childhood in his later years.
In the dilapidated but still full of memories and warmth, the author not only returns to that distant time, but also seems to lead to the future—an immortal future made of words. Although the poet's life is gone, he seems to have forcefully declared before that he would transcend earthly confinements by virtue of the power of writing and art, to reach a "peace he never felt before" in the real world, to another "place worthy of living".
"Still Together"
[French] by Yves Bonafova
Translated by Qin Sanshu and Chen Qing
Excerpts
Still Together (Excerpt)
My loved ones, I leave it to you
The uneasy certainty I've experienced,
This gloomy water is disturbed by the reflection of gold.
Because, yes, it's not all a dream, is it?
My friend, we hold hands of mutual trust together,
We sleep in real sleep,
At night, these two clouds are the same
Embracing each other, calmly, in the clear sky.
At night, the sky was beautiful because of us.
Friends, the women I love,
I bequeath you the gifts you have given me,
This earth near the sky, by chance
Countless hands merge with the sky to become the horizon.
I put us in the smoke of dead leaves
The fire you see is left to you
Those leaves are left by gardeners of the invisible world
Pushed onto one wall of an abandoned house.
I leave this water to you, in the depression of the canyon
That is invisible, they seem to say
The emptiness they carry is the oracle
And the oracle is the promise. I leave it to you
The ashes that piled up in the extinguished hearth
And a little glimmer of it,
The torn curtains I left for you,
Tremors in the windows
and birds trapped in closed houses.
What do I have to bequeath? What I desire,
It is the warm stone of the threshold under the bare feet,
It's summer standing up, standing in the showers of rainfall,
It is the God in us that we do not have.
I'm going to bequeath a few photos,
One of them
It's you passing by a statue that was once there,
The young woman and her young child laughed
Coming home against the torrential rain of that day,
This is a symbol of our gratitude to each other,
It was our property, it was in an empty house
Stay by our side and wait
On the last day, we turned to the house for help.
Bonafuwa manuscript
Cafe*
This man and this woman,
Their long silence disturbed the light,
The light shines on their hands, the hands that stand still.
The painter uses a little light color
Make their fingers active. Let it all be
Like the remnants of the day when night comes.
That woman
It will move and tremble. The table is with a corner,
There is a layer of glass on it, through it
You can clearly see the hurried movement of the night sky.
Like a window? No, it's a prism. It's light
Searching, in the half-light and half-darkness of the room.
Here, there is nothing but the world. There, outside,
Is the hope to come back, with exhaustion,
It spent a long day in town somewhere.
Ah, friends,
Go, that's a river. How to learn
To live, or to learn to die? Not much time
Go think about it, the café is about to close.
So many misunderstandings! But in this one
These empty cups appear to be unfinished on the canvas
But there was a flash, a little light. Maybe it's the only one
A ring belongs to two living beings who are in harmony.
Those Paintings*
Yes, it is you, many colors, it is you, the light,
You were there, when he was before daylight came
Open your eyes. You were in the middle of the night
Stand by his side all night
And stir this water with your hands, that is a dream,
It used to be a number of ripples, spreading
A secret circle of many circles, that is you, the people close to him,
What you can foresee from Him, you also have your own secrets.
The earth is merely an overflow of dreams,
is a piece of clothing, attached to her body to move,
She may perish but never stop.
These mysterious folds. What are they?
It is the evening daylight behind the bushes,
The almond, which is invisible to the world, is opened.
Truffy Muse's painting The Port of Amsterdam
Night roaming
In the first room, this goblet had been shelved for a long time, and time was so fast outside of time, under the sky of the past. Colorful smoke rises and dissipates in the indifference of light. I picked up the cup in both hands and carried it through these thick walls to the dim river in the distance, across the winding roads of the Cass Plateau, still on a summer evening. Do you want to take it to the feet of the smiling gods? Or take it to the stones that have been waiting for years at the foot of the poplars creeping on the banks of the river?
No, it will walk with me. As it darkened, dreams began to gather, poplar trees grew sparse and dimmed, and I sipped with my lips the drinks I had brought with me, and even drank them, and I wandered all the way, and now to the grassy slopes where livestock passed, where the sun was about to fade. The shepherds have driven their horses and sheep back to the shack, so peaceful! It was like a peace I hadn't felt on earth. I arrived at a place worth living. The narrow road covered with stones was covered with grass, and I put my cup in it. Let our future lives be this brilliant sapphire that will stand densely within the four walls of our new home, sometimes with large spherical fragments scattered elsewhere, spilling over the scent of wild lavender in the distance.
I looked at some of the photos in the second room. Who are the two people busy around it? So far away, they blend in with the foundations of these high walls. In these old photographs we washed, the sky was gray, and the trees they planted appeared to be only a thin mist. The photos were scattered and piled up in a basin found in a room.
Let's go again! I brought this cup with me, and its smoke, but where is it facing? I walked into the room and ran around every corner of these attics, which would henceforth be abandoned. The aroma of grain remains, the small lattice windows that have witnessed the vast sky in the spring and summer mornings, and next to these windows are beds and tables. Beneath the attic is an inner sanctuary where a deity from another century once lived. He added a fireplace to the inner sanctum, and all night long he plucked the firewood and watched as the fire gradually extinguished. The walls around us were blackened by the charcoal fire, which was our first impression when we stepped into this other dream.
I held the cup in both hands, and the smoke emanating from its depths grew thicker, blocking my view of where I was going at this time of the night; And I don't know how long I'll hold on, maybe until my knee hits a low table.
*Both "The Cafe" and "Those Paintings" were poems written by the poet to his painter friend Jacques Truffermes.
"Still Together"
[French] by Yves Bonafova
Translated by Qin Sanshu and Chen Qing
Yves Bonafoix is one of the rare writers of this kind in the history of literature: he has maintained a very high artistic standard throughout his life.
—Paul Auster
He combined poetic intuition with scientific research to probe the mysteries at the heart of language. Rhythm, music, rhetoric, painting, architecture, etc., are all covered by the passionate and enduring contemplation of Bonafua.
——Shu Cai (scholar, translator)
The most unique aspect of Bonafua's poetry is "Fortune Thought", he is an intellectual, philosophical poet.
- Toto (poet)