This is a random poetry generator based on nine different translations of Anne Hébert’s celebrated poem, “The Tomb of Kings.” The code was written by Kris Shaffer and available on GitHub (minus the poetry files). Consider this site a companion piece to my larger research project, A Journey in Translation: Anne Hébert’s Poetry in English, to be published in August by University of Ottawa Press. See below for references.

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The Tomb of Kings

I bear my heart on my fist
Like a blind falcon

With the taciturn bird taking my fingers
Lamp swollen with wine and blood,
I go down
Toward the tomb of kings
Astonished
Barely born

What Ariadne-thread leads me
Along the muted labyrinths?
Echoes of footsteps swallow themselves

(In what dream
Was this child tied by her ankle
Like a fascinated slave?)

The author of the dream
Presses on the cord,
And the bare footsteps fall
One by one
Like the first drops of rain
At the bottom of the well.

Already the odor stirs in swollen storms
Oozes under the sills of doors
Of secret, round chambers,
There, where curtained beds are raised.

The motionless desire of the sculpted dead draws me.
I gaze with astonishment
In the black bones themselves
Shine the encrusted stones.

A few tragedies patiently wrought
Lying on the breasts of kings
As if they were jewels
Are offered me
Without tears or regrets.

In a single rank arrayed:
The smoke of incense, the cake of dry rice
And my trembling flesh:
A humble ritual offering.

A gold mask on my absent face
Violet flowers for eyes,
The shadow of love, precise little lines of my make-up.
And this bird I have
Breathes
And sobs strangely.

A long shudder
Like a wind sweeping from tree to tree,
Shakes seven great ebony Pharaohs
In their stately and ornate cases.

It is only the profundity of death which persists,
Simulating the ultimate torment
Seeking its appeasement
And its eternity
In a faint tinkle of bracelets
Vain playthings from elsewhere
Circling the sacrificed flesh.

They sleep and drink,
They lay me down and drink me;
Seven times I know the vise of bones
And the dry hand seeking my heart to break it.

Livid, gorged with the horrible dream
My limbs freed
And the dead thrust out of me, assassinated,
What glimmer of dawn strays in here?
Wherefore does this bird quiver
And turn toward morning
Toward the morning?

The poems are from the following publications:

F.R. Scott, translator, St-Denys Garneau and Anne Hébert, Klanak Press, 1962
Peter Miller, translator, The Tomb of Kings, Contact Press, 1967
F.R. Scott, translator, Dialogue sur la traduction, HMH, 1970
Alan Brown, translator, Poems by Anne Hébert, Musson, 1975
F.R. Scott, translator, Poems of French Canada, Blackfish Press, 1977
Kathleen Weaver, translator, The Penguin Book of Women Poets, 1979
Willis Barnstone, translator, A Book of Women Poets from Antiquity to Now, 1980
Janis L. Pallister, translator, Sinuous Laces, 1986
Alfred Poulin Jr., translator, Anne Hébert: Selected Poems, 1987