Soirée sur l’embarcadère française
Editor Underground
by John Dias
I am a visitor here. I stand alone on the pier watching a young woman. I hear her speaking in the common tongue; I don`t understand her words, but they intertwine with my thoughts. I try to make sense of her foreign, elusive utterances...
Le ciel devient écarlate, il est le temps de partir. La nuit va bientôt tomber.
Her thin arm draws an arc across the sky as she points towards the setting sun.
My mind is filled with musings. She said something about Ciel; I believe that it means “the sky”. The rest of her sentence escapes my understanding, but not my imagination.
Ciel: The sun sinks into a marine eclipse,
And the waters below it are refracted
Into ultramarine and azure hues.
Her voice captivates me as she speaks again:
Les enfants s’inquièteront...
I surmise that les enfants must have a similar meaning as the English word “infants”.
My thoughts wander...
Enfants: The evening scenery reminds the woman of her childhood.
I shut my eyes to ruminate as I listen to the woman once more.
Regarde les nuages, les averses viennent. Étienne, écoute moi, nous devons retourner à la maison.
“Les nuages” are clouds...
Nuages: Foreboding clouds overtake the evening
With onyx feathers like a night sky.
The seabirds fly away into the distance.
I open my eyes. An anchor is drawn up from the waters to rest upon a small vessel’s body. The woman I watched is leaving with another man on his boat. I no longer hear the woman’s voice; I can only think of what she left me. She was like the boat’s anchor that cut into the pier’s skin to stay in place. Removed from the waters, the anchor left a scarred chasm in the seabed that yearns to be filled.
My muse has left me: I watch the stranger I love leave me,
But I’ll return to this shore for the one I long for
Because unrequited passion has tied me to the pier.