There’s an entire system of pronunciation shored up by the Latin names of plants and what they’re staked against. From a structure to the left and out of what might, in a moment of distraction, be called “its contents,” something emerges—an extension, which must stream clear without adding extra weight. The distinction between passive and active voices was instantly forbidden, and barely a glance toward the third, the letter f had already appeared; we pronounced it; the same thing happened to us.
We did everything we could to hold the overflow back, but we all knew that nothing could prevent the surge. In a season that takes note of the sectors turning green one after the other, everyone was handed a piece of light yellow paper on which the words Jardim botanico or Jardim tropical stood out; birds don’t read, its back door opening directly onto another botanical garden.
While each bird’s spiral or ascent is set, inalterable and their instinctual flight patterns predeter- mined, plants, which can’t go anywhere alone, are allowed only oscillation; they con- stantly sway and fold.
Formed for life, the front edge is especially thick and full, sharpening toward the back, shaped like a blade. You’ll notice that the bottom is flat or sometimes slightly concave, becoming fuller again toward the top, to smooth the flow of air.
From out here, we can only imagine how to untangle the space inside and have no way of matching them up with their classifications, but we can, at least, begin with the simple names we already know. This is how we determine that they’re mostly composed of salt, sulfur, and other important components, such as coal and ash, and that in with the compounds are relatively pure things, such as water, air, and silicate, or to put it simply, kinds of stone, various plants, and creatures that move.
No two here have the same name, and if sometimes they seem very close, the next syllable pronounced distances them from certain species while linking them with still others in an ever-ascending stair, a digital landscape that continues to unfurl.
The name wasn’t hidden at all—in fact, it was carefully copied out right beside each one, but when it’s not clear what’s being named or exactly what is included, the gesture seems random, and once, in error, everything that breathes, belong to the black poplar family, or has an uneven surface was lumped together. Anything with variable leaves, or arrow-shaped— anything from the cotton genus, semi-winged, or branching out all over; by mixing up half-named, partly-formed flowers, and not knowing why, at times, he too cocks his head at the shrubbery.
A thin layer of leaves swirled around inside, mapping shifts in the currents of air. Tracing irregular flights, arching the whole body, the back gently turning, the point of the support- ing foot served as a brief tangent between contact and leap.
If it doesn’t flower for awhile, we can’t name it, so we leave it there, a bare noun,
Simply put, the differing rates of growth and changes in pressure that expand the surround- ing cells provoke these openings and closings, violent contractions, a rise in temperature, or a slight inclination of the bust; there is no other possible hypothesis.
Out of fear of leaving it unidentified, many names, sometimes up to a dozen, are given to a single thing. The plant whose name begins with a d, with three acute angles, has been called granite-lover, the blood-colored, that- which-stands-straight, that-which-beds-down- in-the-earth, it-from-the-Caucasus, and several other things; it was the look of its leaves, as if it had forgotten that plants can travel with the aid of their names, as if the name remained only for those who were looking right at it.
On the skin of an indicative plant, without straying from the dyed part of the plate, still in the category of that which the sun hits, they take up a glottal vibration as each odd number arrives, which some beings would find difficult, yet they devote themselves to repeating it.
The Latin names of plants, however long they take to say, all have exactly the same weight.
After climbing up for a clearer view, we saw the landscape fanning down toward the river, not in a gentle slope but in terraces, and a colony of climbing plants—as if to envelop a field of other living things— covered the ground, completely, with indigo flowers. Hadn’t it considered other ways of reaching water, the green billowed and tumbled toward shore, tracing the precise contours of the landscape and everything on it, the bird also unfurling along this line, a little above.
These poems are taken from the English translation of Heliotropes (La Presse Books, 2008),
Ryoko Sekiguchi was born in Tokyo in 1970. At an early age she began to write poetry in both Japanese and French, and when she was eighteen she received the Tokyo Literature Prize of Cahiers de La Poésie Contemporaine. Since 1997 she has lived in Paris, where she studied Art History at the Sorbonne. Three years later she completed her doctorate in Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Tokyo. Today she teaches at various institutes including INALCO, the Paris Research Centre for Oriental Languages and Civilisations.
Sekiguchi's poetry, in its structure and form, breaks from Japanese tradition. Her poems are striking in their composition, because Sekiguchi rejects established formats and textual dispositions, as well as creating a visual, poetic space. Her first volume of poetry Cassiopée Péca (1993) was originally printed in A2-Format. The typographical composition, in the form of variedly arranged text blocks - or labyrinths of lines -, generates a wealth of meaning, which challenges the reader's faculty of interpretation, and turns it into a fundamental element of the poetry. The synthesis of various symbols - an ubiquitous theme in Sekiguchi's work - also contributes to this effect. In this way, elements of different languages are found fused together within the same sentence, and that which is written is sometimes accompanied by a graphical pattern - as in Calques (Engl: Tracing Paper) for example, a poetry collection from 2001. This volume is composed of texts from her Japanese works (com)position (1996) and Hakkouseï Diapositive (2000; Engl: Illuminating Slides), which Sekiguchi translated herself as she does with many of her own poems. Sekiguchi has also translated the works of Gôzô Yoshimasu, Yoko Tawada and French authors including Pierre Alferi, Anne Portugal, and Atiq Rahimi.
Sekiguchi has received numerous grants from the Japanese Foundation for Writing Arts and the Centre National du Livre, amongst others. Her poems have been translated into English, Korean, Swedish, and Arabic.
Sarah O'Brien is a graduate of Brown University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. She grew up on a small farm in Ohio and has lived in Cape Town, Paris, and various places in the United States. Her first book of poems, Catch Light (Coffee House Press, 2010), was a National Poetry Series winner in the US. She is currently based in Atlanta, Georgia, where she is opening a bakery.