One day the Earth will be
just a blind space turning,
night confused with day.
Under the vast Andean sky
there’ll be no more mountains,
not a rock or ravine.
Only one balcony will remain
of all the world’s buildings
and of the human mappa mundi,
limitless sorrow.
In place of the Atlantic Ocean,
a little saltiness in the air
and a fish, flying and magical
with no knowledge of the sea.
Picture a car of the 1900s
(no road for its wheels)
and three girls of that time
travelling through the fog.
They’ll peer through the door
thinking they’re nearing Paris
when the odour of the sky
grips them by the throat.
Instead of a forest
there’ll be one bird singing,
which nobody will ever place
or prefer, or even hear.
Except for God, who listening out
proclaims it a goldfinch.
~ Jules Supervielle, trans. from French by Moniza Alvi
Moniza Alvi was born in Lahore and came to England when she was a few months old. She grew up in Hertfordshire and studied at the universities of York and London.
Moniza’s collections include: The Country at My Shoulder (1993), which was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Poetry Award, and which led to her being selected for the Poetry Society’s New Generation Poets promotion; A Bowl of Warm Air (1996), one of the Independent on Sunday’s Books of the Year; Carrying My Wife (2000), a Poetry Book Society Recommendation; Souls (2002); and How the Stone Found its Voice (2005), inspired by Kipling’s Just So Stories.
Her most recent collections are Split World: Poems 1990-2005 and Europa, both published in 2008. Europa was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize.
‘Prophecy’ is taken from Homesick for the Earth (Bloodaxe Books, 2011), English versions of selected poems by Jules Supervielle. More on information on Bloodaxe is available here, and Moniza’s website can be found here.
Illustration by Babar Mughal.
