The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

JEAN GROSJEAN

I eat the honey that was venom.
I’ll barter and broadcast it if I like.
And I know I won’t exhaust your gifts,
You vermin who know how to pierce me with arrows.
—michael sheringham

The Words of the Poem

So narrow the crack whence came the voice,
so forbidding the edifice glimpsed,
such flaming monsters, such terrible harmony,
so long the path, so keen the wound
and the night so protected.

They need to be just and ambiguous,
never seen before, evident, recognized,
spewed out, held back, spewed out,
packed tight as the seeds in the rat’s mouth,
tight and trim as the seeds on an ear of corn,
secret as the order
that makes the trees of paradise gleam together,
the words of the poem.
—michael sheringham

Jean Grosjean 1912–

paris, france

A

poet and translator, Grosjean was a Catholic priest from 1939 to 1950.

His translations include the New Testament, the Koran, and Greek

tragedies by Sophocles and Aeschylus. Grosjean was taken prisoner in

World War II. His first book, Terre du temps, was published shortly after the war,

its publication greatly aided by André Malraux. Grosjean was on the board of La

Nouvelle Revue Française from 1967 to 1986. In 1968 his Élégies won the Prix