Joyce Mansour was born in England to a Jewish family of Syrian descent who moved to Egypt when she was still an infant. She learned to speak and write in French when she married her second husband, a Francophone Egyptian, and was exiled to Paris when Nasser came to power. Mansour was part of the inner circle of Surrealists, a close friend of André Breton, and the most significant poet to join the group after World War II. She wrote 16 books of poetry, as well as prose works and plays. She lived in Paris, France until her death in 1986.
Selected poems
by Joyce Mansour
A woman created the sun
Inside her
And her hands were beautiful
The earth plunged beneath her feet
Assailing her with the fertile breath
Of volcanoes
Her nostrils quivered her eyelids drooped
Weighed down by the heavy silt of the pillow
It is night
And the calm wound where the breathless void dies
Strikes, struggles, opens and quietly closes
on the swaying rod of Noah the explorer
Copyright © 2023, Emilie Moorhouse, translated from the French written by Joyce Mansour, Emerald Wounds: Selected Poems of Joyce Mansour, City Lights Books
“A woman created the sun”
the French written by Joyce Mansour
To be invisible and loved by you
Nocturnal bird of prey
I hover behind the rainy door
Alone and wild
Heavy
With that viscous oriental suffering
Running red from your scent
In the phosphorescent play of waves
Naked, redheaded and sprawling
Suspended by the scream of a little flute
Petal
Pubis rising
Calm swell calm calm
Unfortunate that I am
The moon breaks the immersed image
Even before your head can come
To die on the pink sand
To be invisible and loved by you
A few leagues from Atlantis
On the open waters of my dreams
Copyright © 2023, Emilie Moorhouse, translated from the French written by Joyce Mansour, Emerald Wounds: Selected Poems of Joyce Mansour, City Lights Books
Sleepless Nights in a Cell of Rock Crystal
the original written by Joyce Mansour