The Train of Life

Night has fallen
And the clouds hide
The sky under curtains of grey
Depriving trees
Of warm legendary lights
It is Friday night
And I am sitting
Waiting
Waiting for old days
To pop on the metallic seat
Next to me and say hello
I am waiting
For the train of life
That will surely
Take me away
Towards elder times
Lights are dim
After all this is a train station
I hope they stay so
Past and future cannot
Be divorced
Like
Black and white
Death and life
Tarot and plans
Madness and reason
Two sides of the walls and coins of
The castle of destinies above
A train tells me
Goodbye that
Sounds like Good Day
Another tells me
Good Day
And I hear the
Train of Death
Ringing the local church
Night has fallen
On the platform
And I cry for the
Pains of yesterday
I recall old days
And call for the new ones
Of tomorrow
I am waiting
Yet
I have to go
It is almost day
My train has
Landed on my platform
My bitter days have entered me
And I am allowed
A ticket for my next station


Irène Corso, Namur & Celles, 2 de Noviembre 2007

Pinches

I cross the bridge
It is a border
Between
Old and new
Awake and tired
My left shows off
Fogs voluntarily hiding
Exhausts of
Burning dirt in the sky
Even bridges have forgotten
To grow
For it is too sad
To connect dirt with dirt
My right bears the
Scars of well-thinking
Righteous bourgeois
There bridges flourish
Maybe too much because
We forget
What nice clothing often entails
It is Sunday and the market of the poor
Even
Dares spreading close to
The beautiful castle
One side
Marriage of picturesque stones with
Hand-made roofing
Other side
Divorce of the ugliness of
Common concrete with unemotional slates
I am on the bridge
And the cars deafen my ears
The wind burns my nose
And my head hurts
I belong to this bridge
To this conspicuous border
From where I admire
The ancient and the modern
I wear old clothes
I cannot renew
And yet work with
Royal blue blood
Opposites pinch me
And I refuse to
Choose my camp
Maybe I should not stay
And return to this home
I have not found yet

Irène Corso, Namur, 22/10/2007

Pluie

Ce matin, j’ai quitté la pluie sous les nuages et mon regard s’est échappé par delà les brumes et l’opacité des gouttes d’une ville grise et translucide. J’observe. Il pleut toujours et ma voiture se trompe de voie pour rouler dans des flaques qui s’apprêtent à la couvrir d’un manteau de perles La voiture fait chanter une flaque, la suivante crée le rythme et le bus qui les dépasse amorce des mélodies étranges toutes de moments non écoutés de répercussions solitaires. Les flaques deviennent enluminures sur les chapeaux noirs trop grands que les passants retiennent à bouts de bâtons repliables grotesques. D’autres ont oublié leurs chapeaux et se recroquevillent vers des chaussures trop petites et béantes sous le ciel. Les lacets se pressent. La pluie ne s’arrête jamais vraiment, ou pour un bref instant seulement. Elle s’interrompt dans des silences émouvants de lumière qui allume les gris, nuance les nuages écrasés de perles de pluie, écrase les chapeaux noirs qui se replient et cachent les bâtons grotesques qui soutenaient les nuages trop lourds.

Mais la pluie reprend, toujours, et la terre soupire de saveurs profondes de sec ressentiment. Les toits reluisent de nouveau et les nuages se voilent. La rue fredonne de l’intérieur sous les pas des passants et les roues des véhicules qui se pressent de nouveau. Les voix se taisent sous les chapeaux qui transitent de pub en pub, de parvis à parvis, de bus à train et de train à taxi. La ville grisonne sous un parapluie sombre de gouttes pesantes et translucides qui la couvrent. Les chapeaux jouent de nouveau, s’amusent à dissimuler et déployer leurs bras mécaniques et humains grotesques qui sortent de chaussures humides d’où les mains pointent vers le ciel sans jamais le regarder vraiment. J’ai alors retrouvé la pluie car j’ai vu mon bras s’étendre entre mes chaussures et mon chapeau noir qui soutenait le ciel.

Irène Corso

Manchester, 18 de junio 2001

Mon Hiver Est Arrivé

L’hiver est arrivé
Il y a quelques jours,
Quelques semaines
Le temps passe
Et je le voudrais immobile
La nuit se lève
Et passe
Et je la voudrais éternelle
La nuit se porte belle
Avec ses robes
En velours sombres
Tout en sobriété
Calme et mortuaire
Je la voudrais
Bruyante et vivante

L’hiver est arrivé

Je me mets
A rêver à des jours passés
Sous des ciels brûlants d’été
Qui me pénétraient jusque dans les os
Et je n’avais plus froid
Pour longtemps
Ou pour un certain temps,
Comme me dirait Brel
Ce soir j’ai froid
La nuit pénètre mes os
J’ai mal
De cette blessure ancienne
Qui n’a jamais voulu guérir vraiment

L’hiver est arrivé

Je me mets à rêver
De trains à la Almodovar
Habités de fantômes féminins
A la recherche de leurs passés perdus
Qui se perdirent un jour
A vouloir trop aimer
Je me mets à rêver
De bus provinciaux
Qui relient des villages
De ruelles blanches et jaunes
Qui sentent bon le pain frais
Et sont amoureux des vautours
Du terrain d’immondices d’à côté

L’hiver est arrivé

Je me mets à rêver
De cottages à la Agatha Christie
Comme je n’en ai jamais vu
Ou seulement en rêves
J’y boirais mon thé
Avec le petit doigt levé
En compagnie d’Helena Bonham Carter
Endimanchée dans un costume victorien
Je me mets à rêver de rues
Sinistrement rouges
Des deux côtés à la fois
Où il pleut de trop
Où même les rouges les plus criards
Des murs et des vêtements
Deviennent noirs de désespoir

L’hiver est arrivé

Je me souviens
De matins sous la pluie
Où je souriais
Car je savais
Qu’il allait être la
Et me tenir compagnie
Et je lui ferais confiance

Je me souviens
De ces jours
Où il me manqua
Parti en cure de repos
Sur les rives espagnoles mêmes
Où mon coeur se brisa
Sur un écueil douloureux

Je me souviens
De moqueries
Douces et légères
De morceaux de citron
A préserver en bon ordre
De regards silencieux
Où nous nous devinions
Je me souviens
Lui avoir dit
Que Barcelone
Sonnait ma perdition
Je me rappelle
Son silence
Qui se tut

Je me souviens
Et je rêve d’autres rives
Où le soleil se couche
Trop tôt sur des estomacs
Malades de s’être suicides
A coup de litres de thé

Je me souviens
De ce dimanche après-midi
Où nous avons trop bu
Toi à la bitter
Moi aux gins tonic
Je souris
Amèrement
A la Brel
Tu me manques
Mon hiver est arrivé

Tea time

Haiku

Le soleil dehors
Pleut ses rayons
Et mon coeur ses regrets

Going to the Pool, or A Note on Discriminatory Consumerism

Today I went swimming, having too much energy to burn and a day off ahead of me I was not sure what to with, especially before seeing the The Bourne Ultimatum tonight.
This may seem a quite insignificant action, unworthy of commenting about. Yet in my North-West England, such a blunt, on-the-spot, last-minute decision is not easy to implement. First you have to choose the time you are going. Yes it is the summer and yet it is more than ever a fight to go swimming. throughout the day the ppol is booked through: 'kid swimming summer', 'active lunchtime swim', 'general social swim', 'elderly well-being swim', 'aquanatal swim'... You get it: if you want to go swimming, you need first to recognise your criteria for eligibility as a swimmer, then choose your time to go, don't be late or you will miss on your fee of £2.20, then present yourself and get change in the special changing rooms of the pool, which, God forbids, are quite alike seaside peep-show changing cabins as in Benny Hill. After all these actions, ready and dressed up for the pool, you will be allowed to go swimming... in a pool packed with a mixture of people, paradoxically, of all kinds. Not what you were being told by the official programme.
Indeed, you will, however, probably, not swim much, or as less as you expected, as far as most people do not get the idea that you should stick yourself to a sector of people swimming at your pace, i.e. not tring to swim in the lanes where the good rapid swimmers are showing off if you are a slow swimmer, or vice versa. I am not speaking of a 'social general swim' session here, but more generally. Even during 'lunchtime active swim' time, the pool is crammed with all speeds-swimmers.
If it was about a 'social general swim', this would be clearer. Indeed, social general swims are not for swimming. They are a pretext to splash out some water around, pretending to do some exercise, so as to apologise oneself for the Snickers, or few odd drinks surely to be enjoyed later in the day or evening. Waiting for you straight outside the pool there is the compulsory junk food machine ready to serve such delicacies.
Strictly speaking, 'active lunchtime swims' are the only swimming sessions accessible. Yet they are also the least active swimming sessions I have seen taking place in that pool. During lunchtime, be careful not on Fridays as it is for pregnant women only as I have been told and barred the access when replying I was not pregnant, people go to the pool to rapidly, swiftly, consume a swim, that is, inserting a time of pretended exercise in their day, filled up with much less healthy habits such as eating pies and driving, rather than walking, to the supermarket. First there are the corporate people who get there quite largely after the beginning of the allocated hour, jumping and splashing a few lengths, and hophop out of the pool back to work or whatever they are doing. Second, there are the elderly ladies, in search of something to keep their day busy and decide to enjoy it swimming very slowly for the full hour. Third, there are the jumping bonker ones who have just burnt thousands of calories at the next door gym and jump in and out to refresh, not without showing off and looking down with disdain at those other unfit people they have to suffer sharing their pool with. Fourth, you have the odd normal, nor fit or unfit, nor big or skinny, people like me, who work asocial hours, that is, evenings and week-ends and look out for some opportunity to get some exercise done, and keep active instead of sitting at home watching daytime television. And we cannot really swim in the middle of this splashing out exercise. Irritatingly, I gave up trying to swim after my 40 minutes today. I will come back, though carefully avoiding the Monday lunch - filled with enthusiasts willing to burn out their hungover of the week-end - as well as Friday as it is for pregnant women only.
Oddly, the early Sunday morning social general swim is a good time to go swimming. At that time, kids are still in bed, showing-off w****** are showing their pecs to their partners in bed, and, as for those who go swimming pretending to be on a diet, they are also still in bed moaning against the harshness of their life. Those who are there are often nice people looking out for some nice active relaxing time, some gently reaching out the 50-lengths mark, this without splashing out your face with water every two minutes, others as gently slowly achieving a 10-lengths mark, slowly with lots of breaks in between. You get it: Going swimming is not an easy entreprise at my pool, except maybe on Sunday mornings.

Today was more of a shocker than usual. There is a new rule in the house. Apparently there were too many people pretending to do what they were not, paying the small pool fee, and then accidentally redirecting their feet towards the gym instead, of, as you will have guessed, much higher fee. Or to the sauna. There are cheaters everywhere, including at the pool. to wvoid such misdemeanour, and the financial difficulties this entails for the leisure centre, a new measure has been created, that of allocating each customer with a special band wrist of which colour is supposed to mean the physical activity you are buying out. My first wristband, this Sunday when I needed to burn out to get some emotional stability, was ready and was gently given to me, which I gently put in my wallet not realising the financial super-importance of the object. Today was different. Before I could say a word the woman at the counter, who strongly reminded me not to go into the pool before 12 o'clock sharp, authoritatively put the bloody wristband around my wrist without asking, sealing it, and this irritates me a lot, at a length that made it some sort of loose bracelet dancing around my arm. So there I was with my bright yellow bracelet, which I ended up taking off while trying to adjust it to my too small wrist size. While swimming, again to calm down the emotional tempest that rages in me, I could not help but notice that we were all marked with such ungorgeous colourful bands, red for those coming out of the gym, yellow for those for a swim session only, blue for those going to the sauna, and could not help thinking about the kind of world this reflects, where we live to be categorised, cast into drawers, without access to each other unless we are rich enough to buy the white band that will cover to access all areas of our leisure centres and social world. Bands, if I am to believe my recent pool experience, are the new class system. As staff till registration numbers are in the restaurant where I work. Maybe I should not be so pessimistic, being unhealthy seems to be a common category that goes under all wristbands. In the same time, most of us at work know some of the managers's till numbers so that we can in fact manage ourselves, trusted.

Haiku

Peaceful morning disturbed
By the bodily shadow
Of a lost night