The Kiss of Sappho: Couplets by Fernand Moutet

Fernand Moutet: screen shot from Emmanuel Desiles, “Fernand Moutet” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N65HV6Qyb9M”)

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​Below are couplets I’ve translated from the French of Fernand Moutet, Pareil au Feu Couvert (Paris: Éditions Points & Counterpoints, 1970). He was a Provençal poet who died in 1993.


Your role is clear: against the window throw a stone,
Poet, and cry out that the sky has just been born.

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The kiss of Sappho, this mythic sun,
I know it well: Margot gave me one.

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Old man, sing again, we beg you: a beech
Struck by lightning burns with beautiful heat.

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The gods—invisible? Yes, but in his prison
The convict can still remember the horizon.

Posted 31 March 2025. Send comments to [email protected].