The last small credits fade
as house lights rise. Dazed in that radiant instant
    of transition, you dwindle through the lobby
    and out to curbside, pulling on a glove
         with the decisive competence
    of the scarred detective

    or his quarry. Scanning
the rainlit street for taxicabs, you visualize,
    without looking, your image in the window
    of the jeweler's shop, where white hands hover
         above the string of luminous pearls
    on a faceless velvet bust.

    Someone across the street
enters a bar, leaving behind a charged vacancy
    in which you cut to the dim booth inside,
    where you are seated, glancing at the door.
         You lift an eyebrow, recognizing
    the unnamed colleague

    who will conspire with you
against whatever the volatile script provides…
    A cab pulls up. You stoop into the dark
    and settle toward a version of yourself.
         Your profile cruises past the city
    on a home-drifting stream

    through whose surface, sometimes,
you glimpse the life between the streambed and the ripples,
    as, when your gestures are your own again,
    your fingers lift a cup beyond whose rim
         a room bursts into clarity
    and light falls on all things.

                                        LA FIN D'UN FILM

                                  Le générique s'étiole, disparaît

                     quand revient la lumière. Tu en as plein les yeux,

                          le temps de te retrouver dans le hall, puis sur le trottoir

                          à tirer sur un gant avec l'assurance

                               à toute épreuve du flic

                                  balafré ou du gars

                                  qu'il poursuit. Tu cherches un taxi

                      dans la rue luisante de pluie et, sans regarder,

                            tu te vois dans la vitrine du bijoutier où des mains

                            toutes blanches effleurent les perles d'un collier

                                qui brille sur le velouté

                                  d'un cou sans tête.

                                  De l'autre côté de la rue quelqu'un

                      pousse la porte d'un bar, laissant un sillage

                            de vide où tu te précipites vers la pénombre du box accueillant,

                            et t'y voilà assis, surveillant la porte d'un oeil.

                                Tu lèves un sourcil quand tu reconnais

                                  ce collègue sans identité

                                  qui va concocter avec toi

                      une suite pour ces lignes qui s'effaçaient... Mais

                             voilà un taxi. Plongeant dans l'obscurité, tu t'assois,

                             en route vers une autre version de toi-même.

                                De profil, tu glisses dans la ville, emporté

                                   par ce reflux de pantouflards

                                   et parfois ton regard y découvre

                       la vie d'entre lit et ciel, tout comme, revenu

                             à des gestes bien à toi, lorsque tu tiens serrée

                             une tasse dont le cercle te détache

                                  d'une pièce bien éclairée où

                                     il pleut de la lumière.

                                                               (translated into French by Jean Migrenne)

HENRY TAYLOR, a native of Loudoun County, Virginia, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1986 for his third collection of poetry, The Flying Change. His first two collections of poetry, The Horse Show at Midnight and An Afternoon of Pocket Billiards, are available in one volume from Louisiana State University Press. A new book of poems, Understanding Fiction, is completed and awaiting publication. Taylor is a Professor of Literature and CoDirector of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at The American University in Washington, DC, has previously taught at Roanoke College, Hollins College, and the University of Utah, where he was Director of the Writers' Conference.

Click here to visit Henry Taylor's faculty webpage at The American University.

"After a Movie," by Henry Taylor from (click title) Understanding Fiction (Louisiana State University).

Click here to read more translations by Jean Migrenne.

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