Domain of the Sticky Followed by Six Responses to Jean-Baptiste Para
by Hélène Sanguinetti
Translated from French by Ann Cefola
LAST DAY OF OCTOBER
soft humidity, heron’s cry, and now poplars stir in the strengthening wind. Banners.
A blindfolded young man appeared quietly if hesitantly, he seemed to play blind man’s bluff, leaning his elbows and hands in the air, he was alone, he seemed to dance. He advanced advanced as far as the shore, so close that I almost shouted for fear that he would fall because this place drops abruptly but his body must have felt the water—the mud—the softness and suppleness of grass, soil, the whole landscape finally and he said aloud: S T O P
Without removing his blindfold, he smiled superbly, as if he had won the lottery, a bet, I don’t know what, he turned on his heels, big pants, very long hair, a little white blond, in a ponytail, left from where he came, where?
○
Picked up a leaf.
Red.
Never such veins: blood vessels + scent of wind
(why the sudden memory of a bloody newborn lamb’s bleating, at the crossroads and on the curb’s strong grass, a packet of cotton between its mother’s legs, he descends, she does not think, tightens the cord and pulls)
+ Walkers in love, a dog with its head in the clouds.
Billionaires’ properties both sides of the road. Land bought at high prices, colonnaded houses with patios, pools, steam baths and jacuzzis, tennis courts, skate parks, gyms and conference halls, caretakers, and leather-leashed mastiffs come and go behind iron gates, I saw a butterfly fly on one of these lordly houses, wings light and head heavy.
After so much stagnant heat, what wind what wind, it’s almost cold and everything moves so forcefully that you become a billiard ball shot at 4 corners.
—So now you’re going to try to draw your inside. The shapes that come to you. You can use color.
Ten of us in the workshop got to work immediately except the young mechanic. And me.
—What inside? I know car engines, and basta. Fuck this thing, fuck it!
And he jumped up with his bag. Mine more than flat at my feet.
The door slammed shut behind him, the workshop silent. Richard (the host hired yesterday) shrugged and resumed walking between the tables, the others did not move. Me neither.
○
I joined in by placing my open hand on the paper and tracing the outline of my fingers and wrist with my pen, as you do when you’re 12 years old, to uncover tracks, find secret hideouts, treaties, a jeweled crown on the page.
Across the bedroom mirror a band of Apaches, undulating
as they swim, upstream on the wide river green at this point,
coyotes sitting under the moon, A cowboy, the sheriff, listen to the ground,
for leagues and leagues of horses, they gallop so fast that they will be
there soon, they’re approaching for sure, they are at least thirty, we have to
flee, flee, children in wagons, don’t cry, blow your nose,
before the mirror, everything flew by with much noise and odor.
The shapes that come to you, bestia!
→ go down the wells
→ go down the cave
→ fear the cave love
→ wash face
→ roll night sea
→ applaud ant
→ look at night from the balcony
→ go around Maïre Island (Father Island)
→ get into a rowboat
→ trembling rump (horse-donkey)
→ raise basket
It’s a basket and the chain creaks, whether going down or up—or it’s a nail, a bit of scarlet meat (Cardinal Your Honor, on your knees!) skewered at the end, a beak that I kept, he goes back up dancing sometimes he peeps (heart an azure flake), we get engaged at the pine summit, grope one another in love, then open the shutters before daybreak, to witness the sky.
○
They are already preparing the parties—sad word—bought flashy tinsel, balls and bells, snowy branches, have installed them everywhere, even around the cherubs that adorn the imitation cloister columns. Foie gras, capon, oysters, 33 desserts, I forget the minuet of cheeses. Let’s hope, if I’m still here, that I can snatch some REAL sheep’s cheese from the waiters’ undulating path.
○
No lakeside exercise today. Too cold + the young trainee is sick. All desire returns to the closet. Anger stayed, seated on his throne and gaged the Restless people. It crawls, opens velvet eyes to escape and offer itself to the fangs: feeding anger, making anger blush, which blushes (with pleasure).
☺ LITTLE SONG TO DO YOU GOOD
It was a little girl, it was a boy,,,,,,,,,
her name was Suzette, his was Suzon,,,,,,,,,
my shirt goes down, Your sex blows in the wind,
mine wants the same, unforgettable little boy
boy who keeps us warm, more than
a roadside of shooting stars and cutting ferns,
rolls Suzette, rolls Suzon in the ditch
blinks a glow-worm, My tongue plays
snail, azure tits, golden trout Glides in
Suzette, Suzon glazes Suzette, suckers and
sugars,,,,,,,,,
○
They discovered an emperor’s tomb on the other side of the lake.
And three horses of unknown origin that resist carbon dating.
A tree frog on my foot. His throat is beating. The moon is full in a sky of Three Kings. 4 stars particularly bright answer one other.
The little that happens to me, poisoned-amazed, sets off towards you without reservation, unchanged, comes back to me. No more news, or do they steal the messages, the letters? I am a wall where the ball bounces. I’m Daniel who writes you, writes no one, Daniel who throws out everything Daniel, Lina, Nata.
Crow!
“Wait less. Continue to build muscle. Your right heart is still smoky, the left is too open.”
So they say!
○
Don’t believe you’re immortal or mortal, only small, exposed to the true wind that shakes the tiles up there + bad encounters—from a brutal or displaced gesture—or feeling unworthy.
Here the tied, sadly posed at last despite perfume, gold, singing, so rigid despite the oils. Another me. Who calls the boys. Boys, lay me down in the wicker box, woven during 1000 and 1000 nights when he was hungry and afraid, each day defeated by the sweet sun, and there they push me, I float on the lake, noise of reeds, woodcocks waking, the sky spins above.
○
No more—no more—zero—where is the beloved red robin, Leaping, from the Rock, from the jetty to say goodbye, throw in the towel! I answer on the way, to the cliff, to
the beat of the grougni, to the soupi, to the hare, sparrow, no whipping, no punishing, far from torment, far from horseman who kills at blink of an eye, killed by whole
battalions, denies the killed their rights, kills and punches all the way down, did not kill sang danced loved and his mouth curled in velvet, mouth open with his teeth,
shining, with love
Fever, who knows? That an eagle would quickly drop, like bird shit.
That goes straight to the jaws, clenched jaws, the pianist holds, and strikes keys which he breaks without breaking.
This is art.
So they say. Don’t care.
○
The giant runs on the steppe, he runs, running he thinks
of his lost fiancée, running thinks, only thinks of her lost,
What the steppe thinks under his furious steps
is terrible, what does the steppe think of the giant’s thought who runs
and about his fiancée, he held her in his hand,
lifted her up to his eyes, not so she may speak but so she
can speak wiggling on his fingers, sitting there wiggling
she told him nice things
that he didn’t understand, he was
happy
happy
happy at that time
I want joy, I want joy, I want joy.
○
Consuela Santiago. Dressed in white and black.
Bird in a cold winter garden ‴
‴
‴ ‴
‴
suddenly sobs and sobs, kisses my rings one by one, how to console a silk, an ember, how to understand a gesture so far from the clearing? Poverty and misfortune are
not kind, sickness, pain are not kind: the bag of the unlovable, if only we could roll it away!
And if Joy has the Same Bag, Joy hides for a multitude of days, a multitude of horns painted red.
I’m up at the edge, I see you so small my mute friend, that I tremble, hold you against me, hug you, tuck you to me, break you.
How to connect with the people below who complain, and dismiss, bark?
“Everything will happen in time, once cleaned, renewed, you will be ready, don’t rush anything and don't worry.”
So they say!
Artwork by Svetoslav Stefanov
Domain of the Sticky Followed by Six Responses to Jean-Baptiste Para
by Hélène Sanguinetti
Translated from French by Ann Cefola
LAST DAY OF OCTOBER
soft humidity, heron’s cry, and now poplars stir in the strengthening wind. Banners.
A blindfolded young man appeared quietly if hesitantly, he seemed to play blind man’s bluff, leaning his elbows and hands in the air, he was alone, he seemed to dance. He advanced advanced as far as the shore, so close that I almost shouted for fear that he would fall because this place drops abruptly but his body must have felt the water—the mud—the softness and suppleness of grass, soil, the whole landscape finally and he said aloud: S T O P
Without removing his blindfold, he smiled superbly, as if he had won the lottery, a bet, I don’t know what, he turned on his heels, big pants, very long hair, a little white blond, in a ponytail, left from where he came, where?
○
Picked up a leaf.
Red.
Never such veins: blood vessels + scent of wind
(why the sudden memory of a bloody newborn lamb’s bleating, at the crossroads and on the curb’s strong grass, a packet of cotton between its mother’s legs, he descends, she does not think, tightens the cord and pulls)
+ Walkers in love, a dog with its head in the clouds.
Billionaires’ properties both sides of the road. Land bought at high prices, colonnaded houses with patios, pools, steam baths and jacuzzis, tennis courts, skate parks, gyms and conference halls, caretakers, and leather-leashed mastiffs come and go behind iron gates, I saw a butterfly fly on one of these lordly houses, wings light and head heavy.
After so much stagnant heat, what wind what wind, it’s almost cold and everything moves so forcefully that you become a billiard ball shot at 4 corners.
—So now you’re going to try to draw your inside. The shapes that come to you. You can use color.
Ten of us in the workshop got to work immediately except the young mechanic. And me.
—What inside? I know car engines, and basta. Fuck this thing, fuck it!
And he jumped up with his bag. Mine more than flat at my feet.
The door slammed shut behind him, the workshop silent. Richard (the host hired yesterday) shrugged and resumed walking between the tables, the others did not move. Me neither.
○
I joined in by placing my open hand on the paper and tracing the outline of my fingers and wrist with my pen, as you do when you’re 12 years old, to uncover tracks, find secret hideouts, treaties, a jeweled crown on the page.
Across the bedroom mirror a band of Apaches, undulating
as they swim, upstream on the wide river green at this point,
coyotes sitting under the moon, A cowboy, the sheriff, listen to the ground,
for leagues and leagues of horses, they gallop so fast that they will be
there soon, they’re approaching for sure, they are at least thirty, we have to
flee, flee, children in wagons, don’t cry, blow your nose,
before the mirror, everything flew by with much noise and odor.
The shapes that come to you, bestia!
→ go down the wells
→ go down the cave
→ fear the cave love
→ wash face
→ roll night sea
→ applaud ant
→ look at night from the balcony
→ go around Maïre Island (Father Island)
→ get into a rowboat
→ trembling rump (horse-donkey)
→ raise basket
It’s a basket and the chain creaks, whether going down or up—or it’s a nail, a bit of scarlet meat (Cardinal Your Honor, on your knees!) skewered at the end, a beak that I kept, he goes back up dancing sometimes he peeps (heart an azure flake), we get engaged at the pine summit, grope one another in love, then open the shutters before daybreak, to witness the sky.
○
They are already preparing the parties—sad word—bought flashy tinsel, balls and bells, snowy branches, have installed them everywhere, even around the cherubs that adorn the imitation cloister columns. Foie gras, capon, oysters, 33 desserts, I forget the minuet of cheeses. Let’s hope, if I’m still here, that I can snatch some REAL sheep’s cheese from the waiters’ undulating path.
○
No lakeside exercise today. Too cold + the young trainee is sick. All desire returns to the closet. Anger stayed, seated on his throne and gaged the Restless people. It crawls, opens velvet eyes to escape and offer itself to the fangs: feeding anger, making anger blush, which blushes (with pleasure).
☺ LITTLE SONG TO DO YOU GOOD
It was a little girl, it was a boy,,,,,,,,,
her name was Suzette, his was Suzon,,,,,,,,,
my shirt goes down, Your sex blows in the wind,
mine wants the same, unforgettable little boy
boy who keeps us warm, more than
a roadside of shooting stars and cutting ferns,
rolls Suzette, rolls Suzon in the ditch
blinks a glow-worm, My tongue plays
snail, azure tits, golden trout Glides in
Suzette, Suzon glazes Suzette, suckers and
sugars,,,,,,,,,
○
They discovered an emperor’s tomb on the other side of the lake.
And three horses of unknown origin that resist carbon dating.
A tree frog on my foot. His throat is beating. The moon is full in a sky of Three Kings. 4 stars particularly bright answer one other.
The little that happens to me, poisoned-amazed, sets off towards you without reservation, unchanged, comes back to me. No more news, or do they steal the messages, the letters? I am a wall where the ball bounces. I’m Daniel who writes you, writes no one, Daniel who throws out everything Daniel, Lina, Nata.
Crow!
“Wait less. Continue to build muscle. Your right heart is still smoky, the left is too open.”
So they say!
○
Don’t believe you’re immortal or mortal, only small, exposed to the true wind that shakes the tiles up there + bad encounters—from a brutal or displaced gesture—or feeling unworthy.
Here the tied, sadly posed at last despite perfume, gold, singing, so rigid despite the oils. Another me. Who calls the boys. Boys, lay me down in the wicker box, woven during 1000 and 1000 nights when he was hungry and afraid, each day defeated by the sweet sun, and there they push me, I float on the lake, noise of reeds, woodcocks waking, the sky spins above.
○
No more—no more—zero—where is the beloved red robin, Leaping, from the Rock, from the jetty to say goodbye, throw in the towel! I answer on the way, to the cliff, to the beat of the grougni, to the soupi, to the hare, sparrow, no whipping, no punishing, far from torment, far from horseman who kills at blink of an eye, killed by whole battalions, denies the killed their rights, kills and punches all the way down, did not kill sang danced loved and his mouth curled in velvet, mouth open with his teeth, shining, with love
Fever, who knows? That an eagle would quickly drop, like bird shit.
That goes straight to the jaws, clenched jaws, the pianist holds, and strikes keys which he breaks without breaking.
This is art.
So they say. Don’t care.
○
The giant runs on the steppe, he runs, running he thinks
of his lost fiancée, running thinks, only thinks of her lost,
What the steppe thinks under his furious steps
is terrible, what does the steppe think of the giant’s thought who runs
and about his fiancée, he held her in his hand,
lifted her up to his eyes, not so she may speak but so she
can speak wiggling on his fingers, sitting there wiggling
she told him nice things
that he didn’t understand, he was
happy
happy
happy at that time
I want joy, I want joy, I want joy.
○
Consuela Santiago. Dressed in white and black.
Bird in a cold winter garden ‴
‴
‴ ‴
‴
suddenly sobs and sobs, kisses my rings one by one, how to console a silk, an ember, how to understand a gesture so far from the clearing? Poverty and misfortune are not kind, sickness, pain are not kind: the bag of the unlovable, if only we could roll it away!
And if Joy has the Same Bag, Joy hides for a multitude of days, a multitude of horns painted red.
I’m up at the edge, I see you so small my mute friend, that I tremble, hold you against me, hug you, tuck you to me, break you.
How to connect with the people below who complain, and dismiss, bark?
“Everything will happen in time, once cleaned, renewed, you will be ready, don’t rush anything and don't worry.”
So they say!
Artwork by Svetoslav Stefanov
Spanish as a Doorway to French
by Ann Cefola
When I started translating Sanguinetti, I had fortunately just moved next door to Ligia Yamazaki, a professional translator. After reading a few draft chapters, she invited me over to review some trickier passages. With our respective bilingual dictionaries, Ligia and I would deconstruct Sanguinetti’s first book, De la main gauche, exploratrice (Flammarion, 1999), or Left-hand Exploring, for more than a year.
The wild and unpredictable Left-hand Exploring mixes prose poetry, narrative, two fables, and fictional journal entries. It was not long before Ligia and I ran into our first linguistic knot—a stream-of-consciousness sentence that, if translated literally, would read:
[…] without looking at them, he speaks at last of the drinker of the plain, who waits on his horse, that he may drink the horse, the water of the river or the pond, or nothing, and that all the skin of the plain passes through his, the warrior and that of the river, the grass, and the cloud together on the feathers of his head, and his fingers, touching the neck of the horse, drinker of the plain. (86)
We agreed the second line’s “qu’il ait bu le cheval” does not mean the horse is the drink. To help, Ligia translated it in her native Spanish, “que el ha bebido, el caballo.” Then the phrase made sense—“that it may drink, the horse” or, more to the point, “that the horse may drink.”
Translating key phrases into Spanish proved invaluable. Ligia also credited her knowledge of Latin and Greek in identifying roots and prefixes. To illustrate, she plucked terre, fleuve, and montagne from the text and wrote down the Latin terra, fluvialis, and montanĕa.
On those Saturday afternoons, we became archeologists, detectives, and clairvoyants. The challenge was to communicate the narrative without removing its inherent difficulty. Often, it was a stretch to understand what is being said or done:
————————— Il suffirait de quelques gouttes au creux de palmes, à mi-distance femme ou homme parmi les palmes leur souriant, puis leur essuyant le front avec la main —————— douce lentement, chaque tête de voyageur se posera dans ces genoux-ces palmes, reposera s’abreuvera. (130)
Ligia slowly pantomimed as she read, “I smile, I wipe my forehead with my hand, I put my head in my knees.” We studied the sentence and tested different possibilities out loud. Finally, we agree:
————————— It would be enough to have a few drops in the hollows of the palms, halfway woman or man amid palms smiling at them, then wiping the forehead with a hand —————— softly, slowly, each traveler’s head will rest on their knees and drink from these palms refreshed watered.
Ligia’s cross-cultural experience, which included living in Europe for a time, enriched the translation. One of Left-hand’s fables referred to a bullring’s “shadow side.” Unaware the arena has a “shadow side,” I learned from Ligia that half the seating is in the sun—and the other in the shade
Happily, however, we usually rolled through the challenges—we would throw out possibilities like a game of charades. When one of our phrases captures a difficult line, Ligia would shout: “Write it down before we forget!” And I quickly scribbled it. Then, she unfailingly asked:
“Is it English?
“Does it make sense?”
And finally, “Is it poetry?”
If I could answer yes three times, I knew we had succeeded.
Selections from this essay previously appeared as “Learning to translate headache poetry” in Source, Winter 2011; and in The Hero (YouTube), uploaded by Ann Cefola, June 23, 2023.
A contemporary French poet who lives in Arles, Hélène Sanguinetti has also published Do not cross / ne pas franchir (Lurlure, 2026), Jadis, Poïena (Flammarion, 2025), Cargo Bleu Sur Fond Rouge (Lanskine, 2025), Et voici la chanson (Lurlure, 2021), reprinted from L'Amandier, 2012; Le Héros (Flammarion, 2008), Alparegho, Pareil-à-rien (Comp’Act, 2005 ; second edition L’Amandier, 2015), D'ici, de ce berceau (Flammarion, 2003), and De la main gauche, exploratrice (Flammarion, 1999).
Ann Cefola’s translations of Sanguinetti have appeared as Alparegho, Like-nothing-else (Beautiful Days Press, 2025), The Hero (Chax Press, 2018), and Hence, this cradle (Seismicity Editions, 2007). She is the recipient of an MFA in Poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, a Witter Bynner Translation Residency, and the Robert Penn Warren Award for Poetry selected by John Ashbery. Her most recent book, Séquence Long Island (L’Harmattan), co-authored with French poet Jean-Luc Pouliquen, made its debut in France last month.
Read More by Ann
“Alparegho, like nothing else” (a narrative poem by Hélène Sanguinetti published by Anomalous Press)
Excerpt from “The Hero” (a narrative poem by Hélène Sanguinetti published in Asymptote)
“Developing Translations” (on Cefola’s translations of Sanguinetti, published in Big Bang Poetry)
Ann’s Translation Slam Book
Full-time job or glorified hobby? Translation is first and foremost an art and, as in all arts, it is a passion, a compulsion, a joy, and hard to classify in terms of a market-based economy.
A translation I fell in love with is… Pablo Picasso, André Salmon and “Young French Painting” (Za Mir Press, 2022) translated by Beth Gersh-Nešić and Jacqueline Gojard. In this book, Salmon helps a stunned art world grasp the disruption caused by close pal Picasso and his colleagues at the turn of the twentieth century. He discusses the brilliant risk-taking in art that can also speak to poets and writers.
My favorite misconception about translation is… That it is hard. If you have general knowledge of a language, a bilingual dictionary, and maybe a book of verb conjugations, you can jump right in. It may feel daunting, but you can always ask a native speaker to check your work, and that dialogue offers an opportunity to learn. As Aristotle advised, we learn by doing.
My favorite translation grant is… The Witter Bynner Residency for Poetry Translation, which allowed me to spend several weeks with visual and literary artists at a beautiful arts institute in Santa Fe.
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