DAY 432 | Growing Up Gay
James Wallis
"Growing up gay often means finding out at an early age that love is conditional."
Préambule
À force de vouloir être
Dans cette solitude où
De n’être rien les autres craignent
À force d’oublier de vivre
Traqué par la peur d’un esclandre
Évitant que n’importe quel
Joyeux drille ne s’aperçoive
De mon effort d’être je n’ose
Ni manger ni boire ni
M’attabler au bord de leurs danses
A force de vivre sous
L’uniforme mal connu
D’une légion étrangère
A force de me donner l’air
De n’avoir pas l’air à force
De m’engluer dans mes pièges
À force de me dire s’ils veulent
Voir mes papiers je suis perdu
Bref à force de feindre
D’être des leurs moi le voleur
Aux semelles de silence
À force de donner le change
Et pour l’ombre d’un bossu
Avoir pris celle des anges
Et d’alourdir mon scaphandre
D’œuvres de plus en plus suspectes
À la barque des beaux rameurs
À force de suivre les ombres
De fantômes sans châteaux
Styx sur tes désertes rives
Sans avoir vécu je meurs.
— Jean Cocteau, Les Lettres françaises, N° 929 (1962)
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Preamble
By dint of wishing to be
In this solitude where
Others fear being nothing
By dint of forgetting to live
Hounded by the fear of a scandal
Preventing just any
Jolly good fellow from noticing
My effort to be I dare
Neither eat nor drink nor
Take a seat at the edge of their dances
By dint of living under
The ill-known uniform
Of a foreign legion
By dint of forever hiding
In plain sight by dint of
Clogging myself in my own traps
In plain sight by dint of
Clogging myself in my own traps
By dint of telling myself if they want
To see my papers I am lost
In short by dint of feigning
To be one of theirs I the thief
With soles of silence
By dint of throwing them off the scent
And for the shadow of a hunchback
Having taken that of the angels
And of weighing down my diving suit
With works more and more suspect
To the bark of the handsome rowers
By dint of following the shadows
Of ghosts without castles
Styx upon your deserted shores
Without having lived I die.
— Jean Cocteau, Les Lettres françaises, No. 929 (1962)
Translated from the French by L3X, corrected & polished by AI.
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