The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

ANDRÉE CHÉDID

Fighters

In the sky of men the bread of stars seemed to me shadowy and hardened but
in their narrow hands I read the jousting of these stars, inviting others: still
dreaming emigrants from the deck; I gathered up their golden sweat and because
of me the earth stopped dying.
—thomas merton

Lied of the Fig Tree

So much it froze that the milky branches
Hurt the saw, and snapped in the hands.
Spring didn’t see the gracious ones turn green.

From the master of the felled, the fig tree
Asked for the shrub of a new faith.
But the oriole, its prophet,
The warm dawn of his return,
Alighting upon the disaster,
Instead of hunger, died of love.
—gustaf sobin

Andrée Chédid 1920–

cairo, egypt

A

poet, playwright, and novelist, Chédid devoted her work to an explo-

ration of the human condition, particularly that of a non-French

woman; she is noted for her evocative and sensual descriptions of the

Orient. Born to Lebanese parents, Chédid began writing early. She published her

first poems, written in English, under a pseudonym. At fourteen she traveled in

Europe but returned to Cairo to enroll at American University. Although she had

cherished an ambition to become a dancer, Chédid married at twenty-two and

had two daughters. In 1946 she moved to Paris and published her first collections