WHITE MIRROR
It should have been in December
This night where I had sworn that I would stay with you
I remember the words I’d used
And what has happened this day
My lacerated features still behold the wall where grace softly blackened
I see you drifting until you exactly look like me
The white mirrors create a kind of void
A young girl with this strange necklace looks at the wreckage of these letters
And she takes pity of my ancient vows
She drinks red dark wine with me and nervously leaves the garden
And the voices of the water all around seem to ruin and justify our love in an instant
And each night I see the features of these characters extracted from her dreams:
My own flesh that the sun watches and finally burns in Wisteria Lodge waste ground
(Demian Clav)
2010
H. CASTLE
How does it called?
I don’t know. No title.
Yoli Yoli Wake up! We’ve got to go!
This sound is what the ancient philosophers called “the harmony of the spheres”.
The nine angelic choirs transmit to the world the silent music sung by God, though every choir transmits a more and more sounding music to his inferior, until it becomes the sound like we usually hear – because sound is the body of music, silence is the soul .
There’s an explanation of this somewhere
The letters become more and more visible in the H. Castle’s gardens
And your enamel eyes irradiate this perfect indifference
What I have rejected as false was true
Do you remember ?
These signs stay with no answer
Not as you will but as I will
The real life touches the sky
(Demian Clav)
2008
BEWILDERMENT
“I find it recorded in my notebook that it was a bleak and windy day towards the end of December in the year 1892. He invited me out to spend a few days at his house, Wisteria Lodge, between Esher and Oxshott. I drove to the place about two miles on the south side of Esher. The house was a fair-sized one, standing back from the road, with a curving drive which was banked with high evergreen shrubs. It was an old, tumbledown building in a crazy state of disrepair. When the trap pulled up on the grass-grown drive in front of the blotched and weather-stained door, I had doubts as to my wisdom in visiting a man whom I knew so slightly.”
Tu inclines tes longs cheveux devant moi. Au fond de la chapelle, un miroir est recouvert d’un voile d’hyacinthe.
Quelqu’un s’est trompé.
Depuis si longtemps je ne sais plus te dire que je t'aime.
Ta beauté me révèle mon obscurité.
Je pleure intérieurement en jouant mon rôle à cause de toi.
Resurrect my first love
It’s time to join the dance
Wake up and leave this black water
And hold me in your arms
I want to see you my love
I miss your tears and sweetness
I miss your weakness and pride
I want to see you
Don’t leave me alone
(Demian Clav)
2010
Citation Conan Doyle
WINTER LIES SONATA
I see Wisteria Lodge’s gardens
And the gesture of this alien hand moving near
To bless or to strangle me
I’m losing my trial, I’m losing my mind
I’m going away, knowing that I’m the slave
Of what can’t be given to you my love
Of what can’t be justified or saved
Nobody’s mirror
Unreal child
Among the rags of the chapel I follow thousand souls and dogs
You seem to erase me from the winter
Your smile and your long hair clutched at the golden linen
Tell me I don’t really love you
Tell me I will not do what I have said to you
At least in this way
Tell me it doesn’t matter
Tell me there is nothing left to do but withdraw
Life seems to deal with your animal mind
And hopes and broken lights flow like memories
Of a useless spiritual love
I cross myself knowing that I’m the slave
Of what can’t be given
Of whom can never be loved
(Demian Clav)
2010
DEAD OFFERING
Our own colours, green and white. Green open, white shut. Main stair, first corridor, seventh right, green baize.
Godspeed.
D
I fight my own convictions
I fight something already lifeless
And if my consternation remains hidden on my features all seems already over
All in all do, I deserve you ?
And did you deserve me ?
All in all, everyone seems to hate themselves
While I slowly become someone else
I refuse to become myself
I can’t wake up anymore and try to keep on reading sitting there under the stairs
And who has been charmed?
I have been
And who is defeated now?
I am
And who will always feel like a slave?
Me
“His enemies discovered him a year ago. Once already his life has been attempted, but some evil spirit shielded him. The many whose lives he had ruined, would not let the matter rest. They banded themselves into a society which should never be dissolved until the work was done. It was my part after we had discovered his false name, to attach myself to his household and keep the others in touch with his movements. An attempt was made in Paris and failed. And we finally returned to this house, which he had taken upon his first arrival in England.”
Why are you just like I wanted
Just like I want
Just like I would like to be ... me
(Demian Clav)
2010
Citation Conan Doyle
USELESS SERVANT
I thought to reveal your first name or your name in a dedication to your memory
But this could maybe hurt you or something like that so…
(Demian Clav)
2010
HEART’S GRAVE
You know I wasn’t expected to see you tonight
I never expect anything anyway
I keep on betraying you; you know
I listen to your heart and I listen to your heart
You are the world
Dance on my gravestone if you want
In the name of all suffering
Les tombes de corail se demandent si je vis encore. Je ne suis pas éprouvé au-delà de mes forces.
(Demian Clav)
2010
VOICES
Ouvre à nouveau mes yeux sur l’incroyable lumière bleue dorée heurtant l’immeuble blanc ou ce qu’il me reste de toi.
Ouvre à nouveau mes yeux sur le parc à perte de vue
Sous la pluie artificielle, il y a la maison d’enfance et l’école disparaît sous mes pas plus légers que le temps.
Ouvre à nouveau mes yeux
Ouvre à nouveau mes yeux
In the artificial rain of April, there’s the childhood house.
The school disappears under my footsteps lighter than time but so far away from you.
Shadows of young flowers on the iron stair.
Tressaillement du rail juste avant ton apparition. L’instantde ce hurlement devient éternel.
Le dernier wagon disparaît avant que je ne puisse reprendre ma respiration.
(Demian Clav)
2010
WISTERIA LODGE ENIGMA
Le long de l’allée principale, les enfants surveillent leurs parents avec un air de mépris.
L'un d’eux me sourit sans raison. Il a probablement retrouvé le collier en cuivre en se faufilant dans la bouche d'égout.
Impératrice ou petite provinciale arrogante et superstitieuse, je me perdais dans des variations incompréhensibles sur toi.
“In a sort of dream I remember being half-led, half-carried to the carriage; in the same state I was conveyed to the train.
It is a matter of history, however, that a little time was still to elapse before he should meet with his deserts. Wily and bold, he and his companion threw their pursuer off their track by entering a lodging-house in Edmonton Street and leaving by the back-gate into Curzon Square. From that day they were seen no more in England. Some six months afterwards, he was murdered with his secretary at the Hotel Escurial at Madrid. The crime was ascribed to Nihilism, and the murderers were never arrested. “
Je ne peux plus recueillir ce qui semble t'avoir émue. Le sens de mots a été perdu, oublié et dénaturé, a été faussé et jeté à l'eau.
Je me force à écrire.
Nous ne pouvions sans doute pas ne pas nous rencontrer un jour ne pas nous blesser.
Ma main effleure la vitre dans l'espoir que tu te réveilles.
J’enterre un verre de vin le long du chemin des herses. Une sorte de vautour ou d'aigle égyptien se plante devant moi. J'entends les battements de son cœur. Je ne peux plus prononcer un seul mot.
Once upon a time somewhere between Esher and Oxshott
I listened to Nightfall conversations, lies
And then I run upstairs and see these skeletons melted with jewels
Emerald corpses awakening and
Those sordid notebooks and diaries made of human flesh
I ask for answers from my guardian angel while the house is slowly burning
The brighter fire is in me and the brighter answer’s a lie
(Demian Clav)
2010
Citation Conan Doyle
SOMEONE
I fail to use my ancient lyrics, chords and fragments
I drift upon romantic ideal shots and leaves
I try to summarize both lies and smiles
I fall and cry
This doesn’t concern anyone
This is outside the loveliest words
This is not this
But someone
(Demian Clav)
2010
SVARÂJ
I love you I love you I love you
Hello excuse me can you tell me where I am?
I know when one is dead and when one lives
Who knows when I have betrayed myself and when I have betrayed you?
Who knows if we could have loved ourselves and why
We have received so much apparently in vain?
(Demian Clav)
2008
EX ORIENTE LUX
(This was the last time I saw her
You know most people never taste that kind of love
Let me say I tasted it once right?)
I surely don’t want to haunt you like this
So called justification:
Evidence of nothing at all
I elegantly use nightfall to lie to you my love
Your Hölderlin-like eyes kneel down close to the cold room
But if this voice is not even my voice
Is this a fragment of you?
Is this you living and breathing in me?
(Demian Clav)
2008
TIME EXECUTION
While I was in the garden I saw this tree
The one you described for me that very evening
I sat down breathless and fell asleep
Answering to some mysterious order in the morning I dug into the ground
At the precise place where I laid down
And I found linen wearing ancient letters
And all the sentences were false testimonies about what I’d been living
You disappeared in the morning
And this road that I have chosen is the best one
Nobody waits for me at the end so I can be sure that I will find myself this way
My father touched my head with his hand
Was it for blessing me or simply for saying goodbye?
Have mercy Love on me watch my bitter weeping
Look at me heart and eyes both weep to you bitterly
Before you I yield my all
My all I open full to you
Your son is measured here against us by his death upon the tree
I cannot set aside my sorrow but through your grace
I may well see with open eyes upon the mourning
Your love is greater than the sins in me
(Demian Clav)
EARLINGER LAKE (LOSERSTAR)
Les livres saints nous disent que avant de partir en voyage, la femme de Loth voulut se retourner une dernière fois .Et qu’elle fut changée en statues de sel. Or, on ne filme que le passé, je veux dire que ce qui se passe, et ce sont des sels d’argent qui filtrent la lumière.
I see you so indelicate (and bright)
Can’t say if I am still with you
Or is it just for laugh (oh no)
Or is it just
I let you down for the second time
And this one seems to be ... fatal
I see the silver price of blood
(Demian Clav)
SUB SPECIE AETERNI
I know when one is dead and when one lives
Lend me a looking-glass
I come back to this place where you’re still there
Evenly reading the same words as an hostage
You know that I simply ask you for a sign
I have no right to do it
This is harder than me
Stars brighten the distance between suffering and poverty
Forgiveness and recovery
Death and severance
Why do you bother the woman?
For she has wrought a good work upon me.
For you have the poor always with you, but me you have not always.
For in that she has poured this ointment on my skin, she did it for my funeral.
Verily I say to you.
Wherever this Gospel shall be preached in the whole world, there shall also this, that this woman has done,
be told of her for a memorial.”
(Demian Clav)
2008
NIGHT FALL LEAGUE
Why could you not watch with me one hour? Watch with me
I must find an answer to these voices swearing that I was unfaithful
I should have lived my life in an instant sharing this stirring smile with you
The time of an April dance
And these signs before or after are gone
And will not come back anymore
Already far away stay with no answer
Eventually mean nothing
The blue skeletons of birds dance
This night is made of white light stones and contempt
Not as I will, but as you will.
I don’t know what to do with these words anymore
And it is you who tries to justify
The pain we both feel at the same instant for the same reason
This suffering we will never forget
(Demian Clav)
ARREST
If only you could reach these three black lights following the stairs
Until the hall piercing with iron trembling bars
Enter the reserved chamber where I deal this elegant vitriol-like intensity
Praying and watching esoteric thoughts of death
Do you remember?
But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled that it must be like this?
Have you come out, as against a thief, in order to judge me?
I sat daily with you teaching in the temple and you said nothing to me.
But all this was done, that the Scriptures of the Prophets might be fulfilled
(Demian Clav)
THRESHOLD
Slowly he returns to me
A dying angel flying down
He seems to know infinity and smiles
And then who wants to know who’s dead?
Surely an angel not me
I’m so far away to be here
And so are all the words to be sure
Away what’s dead for all or for nothing at all
Effectively the sky is the limit
A kind of light is screaming
So the time in my mouth will talk to me
Slowly he returns to me
The loveliest angel flying down
And now how can I read one more line?
When I know there is only one way for me:
Becoming dead for him
Becoming light
(Demian Clav)
1988
THE UNDERWORLD ENGAGEMENT
One more introduction: how could I keep on telling this story?
Is this really what I want to do anyway?
I see you slowly disappearing within what I write for you
How can I be sure that I don’t lie to you?
I only feel that this trembling voice
This war like voice betraying my real intentions
This miserable voice is really my own voice
And then I would have known if I had seen you one more time
And for lack of knowing your secrets
I would have known had you wondered what you wanted to live with me
Your name is on a silver law book once baptized with scary sacred tears
Someone deep in me defies this slovenly angel who’s dead and who? Me ? starts to smile and
There will be no more angels no more visions unveiling promises or signs
To justify this story saying you should have lived again after the death strike
What I have done for you was not enough
We finally did nothing but defy and lie to each other
Don’t think that I could have known you would be back to the H.castle
I didn’t want to believe in all this and I know I still don’t in a way
I said I didn’t believe in you
But if only I should have guessed that I would talk to you like this
We will be together
(Demian Clav) 2004
WHITE EVENING
I don’t remember what I have said to you
I’m sure you don’t know it yourself
We are just together here
And you will find nothing on the H. Castle gardens carrying you against your will
Until this waste ground where I sit for years
Eyes lowered
Scarcely breathing
(Demian Clav)
2008
H. CASTLE GRAVEYARD
There isn’t any explanation
The letters become invisible on the H. castle gravestones
And your eyes irradiate this false indifference
But where are you going?
(Demian Clav)
2008
