The smell I’m sure comes from farther off than the seaweed
dead grasses brought by the sea
false twin of humidity and you in symmetry with the worm
up there silencing the white holes
you’d only have to lift your finger
to invent the rain
I’d put a lid on it
and we would never speak of it again.
But you drew the bolt when the eclipse came
even the shutters stayed closed
with four roses outside at the foot of the wall
tomorrow I’ll cut three of them you told me
and put them to dry on the grass
the fourth is the rose of the winds
someone has to keep the north
when pieces of the compass are pecked
by the highway’s devouring birds.
Your finger raised toward the dark regions
was it leaving to descend again
with the very first rain
was it going away to pierce the abscess
so the sky would deflate
unless it’s saying more prosaically
since poetry is not afraid of paradox
how hard it is to defend
THE INTEREST OF ALL THE ROSES.
(Translated from the French by
Zoë Skolding)
Sometimes I climbed the ladder
why stay at the foot of the tree when
on the branches hangs the matter of return
towards more down-to-earth roses
sometimes it would fall like Newton’s apple
I bent down to pick it up
should I hesitate and fall as well.
Whoever can’t forgive gravity
invents fruits riper than years
nothing falls when those fruits fall
that science can’t make rise up
neither the stillness of the flask of breath
the shards of the long-ago language
nor what from falling takes nothing but form
before the scientists seize it.
Where then does forgiveness come from if not
from the stories I tell myself
bottles thrown into the sea
pretending to come from the earth
when everybody knows that
WATER WAS THE FIRST ONE THERE.
dead grasses brought by the sea
false twin of humidity and you in symmetry with the worm
up there silencing the white holes
you’d only have to lift your finger
to invent the rain
I’d put a lid on it
and we would never speak of it again.
even the shutters stayed closed
with four roses outside at the foot of the wall
tomorrow I’ll cut three of them you told me
and put them to dry on the grass
the fourth is the rose of the winds
someone has to keep the north
when pieces of the compass are pecked
by the highway’s devouring birds.
was it leaving to descend again
with the very first rain
was it going away to pierce the abscess
so the sky would deflate
unless it’s saying more prosaically
since poetry is not afraid of paradox
how hard it is to defend
THE INTEREST OF ALL THE ROSES.
why stay at the foot of the tree when
on the branches hangs the matter of return
towards more down-to-earth roses
sometimes it would fall like Newton’s apple
I bent down to pick it up
should I hesitate and fall as well.
invents fruits riper than years
nothing falls when those fruits fall
that science can’t make rise up
neither the stillness of the flask of breath
the shards of the long-ago language
nor what from falling takes nothing but form
before the scientists seize it.
from the stories I tell myself
bottles thrown into the sea
pretending to come from the earth
when everybody knows that
WATER WAS THE FIRST ONE THERE.
I am the seller
in another I am a pedestrian street
and you put petrol
in the tank of your sadness
then comes the wave the immense wave
and I enter the fleeting law of the contract
that is how we subjugate
now mortals in our own right
the mystery of existence.
in ordinary days
I enter the transaction
as one enters quarantine.
But I re-entered my house after the chaos
and lit a candle at the foot of your photo
it made your lips tremble
your lips were trembling
and petrol ran from your mouth
its black stink stealing all the space.
and I was staying and you were leaving.