"The rapid stream where memories recede"

På jakt efter en viss versrad av Yves Bonnefoy (som jag inte hittar) blir jag ändå sittande och fastnar i dikten "La maison natale", översatt som "The house where I was born".

Det handlar om minnen av barndomens värld. Det är vackert och sorgset.

"Though we reach out, our hand can never cross

The rapid stream where memories recede."

[ ... ]

"I remember, it was a summer morning.

The window was half open. As I came closer,

I saw my father there in the garden.

He stood motionless. Where he was looking,

Or at what, I couldn't tell - outside everything.

Stooped as he already was, he lifted his gaze

Toward the unachieved, or the impossible.

He had laid down the pickaxe, the spade.

The air was cold on that morning of the world.

But coolness is impenetrable, and cruel

Are the memories of childhood mornings.

Who he was, who he had been in the light:

I did not know, I still do not know."

Bonnefoy, Yves: The curved planks. Translated from the French and with an afterword by Hoyt Rogers. Foreword by Richard Howard. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006