À Wicklow aussi un chien a pleuré cette nuit
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| Seamus Heaney |
en souvenir de Donatus Nwoga
Quand les humains eurent compris ce qu’était la mort
Ils envoyèrent à Chukwu un chien porteur de ce message :
La maison de la vie devait leur être ouverte.
Ils ne voulaient pas finir à jamais perdus
Comme le bois brûlé disparaît en fumée
Et cendres dispersées au vent. Non : leurs âmes
Étaient comme une troupe d’oiseaux croassants
Au crépuscule, revenant aux mêmes perchoirs,
Aux mêmes purs climats, aux ailes étirées du matin.
La mort serait comme une nuit passée dans la forêt :
À l’aube, chacun serait rentré dans la maison de la vie.
(Voilà ce que le chien devait dire à Chukwu.)
Mais le chien oublia la mort et les humains, préférant
Quitter le sentier en trottinant pour aboyer
Car un autre chien, en plein soleil, lui aussi aboyait
Depuis l’autre rive d’une large rivière.
Et c’est ainsi que le crapaud parvint avant lui chez Chukwu,
Le crapaud qui avait entendu les premiers mots
Du message du chien. « Les humains », dit-il
(Et sur ce point le crapaud sut convaincre),
Le humains veulent que la mort dure toujours. »
Alors Chukwu conçut leurs âmes comme des oiseaux
Volant à sa rencontre, taches noires sur le crépuscule,
Vers un lieu sans arbres ni perchoirs
Ni aucun retour vers la maison de la vie .
Et son esprit s’emplit de rouge et de noir tout ensemble
Et, de ce que le chien lui apprit par la suite, rien ne put
Modifier cette vision. Grands chefs, grandes amours
Dans la lumière effacée, le crapaud dans la boue,
Le chien pleurant toute la nuit derrière la maison des morts.
Seamus Heaney, L’Étrange et le connu, édition bilingue, traduction de l’anglais (Irlande) par Patrick Hersant, Gallimard, 2005, p. 128-131.
Seamus Heaney, The Spirit Level, Faber and Faber, London, 1996.
A dog was crying
tonight in Wicklow also
in memory of Donatus Nwoga
When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message :
They wanted to be let back to the house of life.
They didn’t want to end up lost forever
Like burnt wood disappearing into smoke
Or ashes that get blown away to nothing.
Instead, they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and headed back for the same old roosts
And the same bright airs and wing-stretchings each morning.
Death would be like a night spent in the wood :
At first light they’d be back in the house of life.
‘The dog was meant to tell all this to Chukwu).
But death and human beings too second place
When he trotted off the path and started barking
At another dog in broad daylight just barking
Back at him from the far bank of a river.
And that is how the toad reached Chukwu first,
The toad who’d overheard in the beginning
What the dog was meant to tell. ‘Human beings’, he said
(And here the toad was trusted absolutely),
‘Human beings wants death to last forever’.
Then Chukwu saw the people’s souls in birds
Coming towards him like black spots off the sunset
To a place where there would be neither roosts nor trees
Nor any way back to the house of life.
And his mind reddened and darkened all at once
And nothing that the dog would tell him later
Could change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves
In obliterated light, the toad in mud,
The dog crying out all night behind the corpse house.
When human beings found out about death
They sent the dog to Chukwu with a message :
They wanted to be let back to the house of life.
They didn’t want to end up lost forever
Like burnt wood disappearing into smoke
Or ashes that get blown away to nothing.
Instead, they saw their souls in a flock at twilight
Cawing and headed back for the same old roosts
And the same bright airs and wing-stretchings each morning.
Death would be like a night spent in the wood :
At first light they’d be back in the house of life.
‘The dog was meant to tell all this to Chukwu).
But death and human beings too second place
When he trotted off the path and started barking
At another dog in broad daylight just barking
Back at him from the far bank of a river.
And that is how the toad reached Chukwu first,
The toad who’d overheard in the beginning
What the dog was meant to tell. ‘Human beings’, he said
(And here the toad was trusted absolutely),
‘Human beings wants death to last forever’.
Then Chukwu saw the people’s souls in birds
Coming towards him like black spots off the sunset
To a place where there would be neither roosts nor trees
Nor any way back to the house of life.
And his mind reddened and darkened all at once
And nothing that the dog would tell him later
Could change that vision. Great chiefs and great loves
In obliterated light, the toad in mud,
The dog crying out all night behind the corpse house.
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| Chukwu |
