Qu'on me loue enfin ce tombeau ...

from Illuminations ... Enfance (2016) by Thomas Oboe Lee

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lyrics

Qu’on me loue enfin ce tombeau, blanchi à la chaux avec les lignes du ciment en relief, ---trés loin sous terre.

Je m’accoude à la table, la lampe éclaire trés vivement ces journaux que je suis idiot de relire, ces livres sans intérêt.

A une distance énorme au-dessus de mon salon souterrain, les maisons s’implantent, les brumes s’assemblent. La boue est rouge ou noire. Ville monstrueuse, nuit sans fin!

Moins haut, sont des égouts. Aux côtés, rien que l’épaisseur du globe. Peut-être les gouffres d’azur, des puits de feu. C’est peut-être sur ces plans que se rencontrent lunes et comêtes, mers et fables.

Aux heures d’amertume, je m’imagine des boules de safir, de métal. Je suis maître du silence. Pourquoi une apparence de soupirail blêmirait-elle au coin de la voûte?

[Trans.]

Let them rent me this tomb at the last, whitewashed, with the lines of cement in relief – very deep underground.

I lean on the table, the lamp lights brightly those magazines I’m a fool to re-read, those books without interest.

At a vast distance above my subterranean room houses root, fogs gather. The mud is red or black. Monstrous city, night without end!

Lower down there are sewers. At the sides only the thickness of the globe. Perhaps gulfs of azure, wells of fire Perhaps on these levels moons and comets, seas and fables meet.

In hours of bitterness I imagine balls of sapphire, of metal. I am master of silence. Why should a semblance of skylight pale in the corner of the vault?

credits

from Illuminations ... Enfance (2016), released February 18, 2017

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about

Thomas Oboe Lee Cambridge, Massachusetts

Thomas Oboe Lee was born in China in 1945. He lived in São Paulo, Brazil, for six years before coming to the United States in 1966. After graduating from the University of Pittsburgh, he studied composition at the New England Conservatory and Harvard University. He has been a member of the music faculty at Boston College since 1990. ... more

thomasoboelee.com

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