And With No Appealling

  Traducción: Billy B. Thompson

To Chantal Sébire*

Hanging at the edge of the bed, her dream that never came to be,

now live on.

For the last time you shall have folded up the blanket that your

mother gave you, for the last time you shall watered your plants

and felt the coldness of obedience, the bitter taste of the

pills, the impotence of radiation is the road to blindness.

In the mirror you no longer can see yourself in that tormented

monster.  Can anyone comprehend the incur-

able taste of blood.  The weight of your face is

an exploded apple that boils in the open air.  Of course,

the days of your life cannot be destroyed.  What a lot of fear

can they engender!

There can be no peace of mind,  the trial courts write one abomination after another,

judicial judgments with no sense of hope are smiles

torn asunder and swallow up the silence and close off

the doors with fear.

You wait quiet and insignifcantly for the mutilated No.  Therefore,

this afternoon, and with no appealling, you shall double the dosage for euthanasia,

the breathing will become more shallow, you shall place her slowly

on the table, alone, untouched, the pain shall end.

Nota Bene

            On 19 March 2008, Chantal Sébire was found dead at home.  This professor suffered from a rare, incurable, deforming, and painful cancer; it left her an invalid.  Two days before her death, a French court forbade her appeal for ethanasia.  Her case reopened in France the debate over the right to die with dignity and the rights of patients with incurable diseases.

 Entrevista y traducción al inglés de seis poemas de su libro Navajas sobre la mesa”  Traducción y entrevista: Billy B. Thompson En: Essays in homage to John Esten Keller,  Editorial Juan de la Cuesta Hispanic Monographs, EE.UU, 2012,  pp. 283-291.