Wanting to avoid a straightforward political post reacting to Paris, I tried to think of anything I could produce with my A-Level French skills: something more personal than a rant about how obviously awful terrorist acts are. We know that the death of over 150 Parisians is disgusting, and news cycles will spend days if not weeks discussing political ramifications, the ‘war on terror’ and what ‘we should do’ about ISIS/IS/ISIL/Daesh.
That’s before we even touch on far-right knee-jerk reactions. No doubt Marine Le-Pen and the FN will be slinging some our way as soon as they get the chance, conveniently forgetting that the refugees they complain about as ‘migrants’ are fleeing daily episodes of violence just like this in Syria/Afghanistan/Eritrea/Insert-unsafe-homeland-here.
Anyway, I trawled my files and found a poem from 2011, first written in English for the Creative Writing club at Adams Grammar School during my A-Levels (also the same school Jeremy Corbyn attended, it turns out). Inspired by Mickey Collinson’s translation of a Hungarian poem which he shared with the group, I created a new version in French to have a go and practice my A-Level French.
Based on a family holiday to Duilhac in 2010 (a town on the edge of the Pyrenees, in the Cathar lands of the Corbieres), I had written my poem on the ‘Gorge de Galamousses’, this beautiful landscape near where we stayed. Silly errors aside (the spelling of ‘Galamousses’ is actually ‘Galamus’, throwing my rhyme scheme out the proverbial French window), I think the poem still has some value and makes a surprisingly good metaphor for the resilience of France and its people in the face of such a shock.
Feel free to judge for yourself: below is the poem in French, and below that is a direct translation which doesn’t rhyme but preserves the meaning. Thanks to my French teachers at Adams, by the way – Gregory Festuot and Betty Halcro also deserve some credit for this.
If you want to view the Gorge yourself, copy ’24 D7, 66220 Saint-Paul-de-Fenouillet, France’ into Google Maps and go on Street View. Voila.
Otherwise, here’s said poem. Vive la France.
Le Gorge de Galamousses
Une abîme vaste, la terre tranchée,
La Gorge de Galamousses.
Elle verse les seaux de l’eau tranquille
sur les montagnes douces,
un simple jour toute immuable
et plein de la paix intime:
Les ombres vertes cachent les arbustes;
les vies des arbres rabougris.
Les routes s’accrochent aux falaises fortes
même si’ils sont tachetés…
Aucune tempête peut démolir
les plateaux gris des Pyrenées.
Un château mort, tout ruiné
s’assied sur le sommet
immense. J’explorai avec mes yeux
la vue qui m’entourait.
J’espère qui rien changerai,
au moins, pour Quéribus –
J’espère qui personne vois jamais
le mort de la Gorge de Galamousses.
Harry Brennan – 17.6.2011
——–
A vast abyss, the sliced earth,
The Gorge of Galamousses.
She pours the pails of quiet water
upon the sweet mountains,
a simple unchanging day
full of intimate peace:
The green shadows hide the shrubs,
the lives of shrivelled trees.
The roads cling to the strong cliffs
even if they are stained…
Not a single storm can demolish
the grey plateaus of the Pyrenees.
A dead castle, completely ruined
sits upon the immense
summit; I explored with my eyes
the view which surrounded me.
I hope nothing will change,
at least, for Queribus –
I hope that no one ever sees
the death of the Gorge of Galamousses.
Harry Brennan - Seeing where it all takes me 
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