As they speak they all create a cacophony in which you can only make out a few masticated syllables, as if torn out by teeth. My God! How difficult it is to reconcile with the world! …
I have counted. There are twelve of them. Like the Apostles. And is the waiter meant to represent Christ?
And what if I bought a ‘Jesus’ t-shirt?
I am difficult to find
In this café (some evenings, a dance);
They discuss local affairs,
Money to lose, people to kill.
I will take a coffee and the bill;
We’re not really at Woodstock.
The bar’s customers have left,
They’ve finished their Martinis,
Hee hee!
NICE
The Promenade des Anglais is invaded by Black Americans
Who don’t even have the build of basketball players;
They meet Japanese supporters of the ‘way of the sword’
And some semi-Californian joggers
All at around four in the afternoon,
In the dying light.
MODERN ART
Impression of peace in the courtyard,
Trafficked videos of the war in Lebanon
And five Western males
Discussed social science.
THE GARDEN OF FERNS
We had passed through the garden of ferns,
Existence suddenly seemed light
On the deserted road we walked at random
And once we left the gates, the sun became scarce.
Silent snakes slid through the thick grass,
Your eyes revealed a gentle distress
We were in the midst of a vegetal chaos,
The flowers around us displayed their petals.
Animals without patience, we wander in our Eden,
Haunted by suffering and conscious of our cares,
The idea of fusion persists in our bodies:
We are, we exist, we still want to be,
We have nothing to lose. The wretched life of plants
Brings us back to death, sneaky, invasive.
In the middle of a garden our bodies decompose,
Our decomposed bodies will be covered with roses.
THE GIRL
The girl with black hair and very thin lips
Whom we all know without having met
Outside of our dreams. With a sharp finger she pinches
The palpitating bowels of our burst bellies.
VÉRONIQUE
The house was pink with blue shutters,
I could see in the night the features of your face
Dawn was approaching, I was a bit nervous,
The moon was sinking in a lake of clouds
And your hands drew an invisible space
Where I could move and spread out my body
And I walked towards you, near and inaccessible,
Like a dying man crawling towards death.
Suddenly all changed in a white explosion,
The sun rose on a new kingdom;
It was almost hot and it was Sunday,
In the air rose the harmonies of a psalm.
I could read a strange affection in your eyes
And I was very happy in my little kennel;
It was a dream tender and truly bright,
You were my mistress and I was your poodle.
A field of constant intensity
Sweeps away the human particles
Night sets in, indifferent;
Sadness invades the plain.
Where to find the naïve game?
Where and how? What must we live?
And what is the point in writing books
In the distracted desert?
Snakes slither beneath the sand
(Always towards the North)
Nothing in life is repairable,
Nothing remains after death.
Each winter has its demand
And each night, its redemption
And every age in the world, every age has its suffering,
Inscribed in the generation.
Thus, suffering generations,
Packed like water fleas
Try to count for nothing
The sensors of absent life
And they all fail, without too much fuss,
Night will soon cover all
And the monogamous exhaustion
Of a body sunk into the mud.
A SUMMER IN DEUIL-LA-BARRE
Creeping of branches between the solid flowers,
Drift of the clouds and savour of the void:
The sound of time fills our bodies and it’s Sunday,
We completely agree, I put on my white jacket
Before collapsing on a garden bench
Where I fall asleep, I awake two hours later.
A bell chimes in the serene air
The sky is hot, wine is served,
The sound of time fills life;
It’s early evening.
GREY HOUSE
The train made its way through the outside world
I felt very alone on the orange seat
There were fences, houses and flowers
And gently the train parted strange air.
Among the houses there were pastures
And everything seemed normal except me
It’s been a long time since I lost all joy
I live in silence, it slips by in long tracks.
The sky is still clear, already the earth is dark,
A fissure in me awakens and grows
And this evening that falls in Basse-Normandie
Has an odour of ending, reckoning and number.
TWILIGHT
Masses of air blew between the holm oak groves,
A woman was panting as if in childbirth
And the sand struck her naked and chalk-white skin,
Her two legs opened to my lover’s fate.
The sea retreated beyond miracles
On black ground where possibilities opened
I waited for morning, the return of oracles,
My lips parted with an invisible cry
And you were the only horizon of my night;
Knowing the morning, alone in our neighbouring bodies,
We had passed through, without suffering or sound,
The superimposed skin of divine presence
Before penetrating a level plain
Scattered with bodies lifeless, naked, rigidified;
We were walking side by side on a narrow road,
We knew moments of unjustified love.
EVENING WITHOUT MIST
When I wander oblivious among the buildings
I see future sacrifices emerge,
I would like to adhere to some artifice,
Rediscover hope through furniture shopping
Or believe in Islam, feel a very gentle God
Who would guide my feet, take me on holiday,
I cannot forget that scent of departure
Between our brusque words, our unravelling lives.
The evening process feeds the hours,
There is no one left to record our complaints;
Between each stubbed-out cigarette,
The forgetting process defines happiness.
Someone has designed the curtains’ fabric
And someone has thought up the grey blanket
In whose folds my body goes still;
I will not know the softness of the grave.
When torrential rain fell
On our little house
We were sheltered from evil,
Snuggled up against reason.
Reason is a big tender dog
The opposite of loss
There’s nothing left to understand,
We are given obedience.
Give me peace, happiness
Free my heart from hate
I can no longer live in fear,
Give me human measure.
&nbs
p; Dawn grows in the softness
Milk warms up, little flames
Vibrant and blue, little sisters
Milk swollen like a woman’s breast
And the sound of the percolator
In the silence of the city;
To the South, the echo of a motor;
It’s five o’clock, all is tranquil.
There is a country, or rather a frontier,
Where light is soft and almost solid
Human beings exchange fragments of light,
But haven’t the slightest understanding of the void.
The parable of desire
Filled our hands with silence
And everyone felt himself die,
Our bodies tingled in your absence.
We crossed frontiers of chalk
On the second morning the sun neared
Something was moving in the sky,
A gentle beat made the rocks vibrate.
The droplets of light
Fell on our wounded bodies
Like the infinite caress
Of a divinity – matter.
THE CONTRACTING OPERATORS
Near the end of a night, at the ideal moment
When the blue of the sky noiselessly widens
I will cross alone, as if unknown to all,
The inexhaustible and gentle familiarity
Of the Northern Lights
Then my feet will slip along a secret path,
At first sight banal
That for years has snaked labyrinthine,
That I will recognise.
It will be a calm and discreet morning;
I will walk for a long time, without joy or regret,
The soft light of winter dawns
Wrapping my steps with a friendly smile;
It will be a luminous and secret morning.
The family refuses to make the slightest comment;
Monsieur has gone off on a trip.
In a few days’ time there will surely be war;
In the East the conflict is spreading.
THE LONG ROAD TO CLIFDEN
To the west of Clifden, a headland,
Where sky turns to water
Where water turns to memory
Right at the edge of a new world
Along the hills of Clifden,
The green hills of Clifden,
I will come to leave my cares.
To accept death it is necessary
For death to turn to light
For light to turn to water
For water to turn to memory.
The West of all mankind
Is found on the road to Clifden,
On the long road to Clifden
Where man comes to leave his cares
Between waves and light.
The enamoured master in a fictional challenge
Neither affirms nor denies in his invisible centre
He signifies, making all futures possible
He establishes, permitting a positive fate.
Feel in your organs the life of light!
Breathe carefully, with delight
The middle path is there, complement to action,
It is the ghost inscribed in the heart of matter
And it is the intersection of multiple emotions
In a core of unspeakable and blueish void
It is the homage paid to absolute clarity
The root of love, the apperceptive heart.
PASSAGE
I. Rainclouds billow in the mobile air,
The world is green and grey; it is the reign of the wind.
And all meaning dissolves save the sense of touch …
The reflection of lime trees trembles on the pond.
To slowly rejoin a maritime death,
We walked across hot, white deserts
And came close to a dangerous abyss …
Feline figures were smiling within
And naked wills refused to die;
Come from Burma, two companions,
Features distorted by an awful smile,
Slipped into the inner orb of the Scorpio.
Along the austere paths of the Capricorn mountains,
Their transfixed bodies danced in our brains;
The dark tracery of the land of Fangorn
Suddenly engulfed the obsessive image.
And some reached the last archipelago …
II. It is an inclined plane surrounded by mist;
Where the sun’s rays are always oblique
All seems covered in asphalt and bitumen,
But now nothing obeys mathematical laws.
It is the advanced point of individual being;
Some have crossed the Gate of Clouds.
Already transfigured by a cruel path,
They smiled, very calm, at the moment of passage.
And astral currents irradiate the humble clay
Born of, dark alchemy, the hard block of willpower
That blends and unites like a docile current
With the diffuse mystery of the Great Black Ocean.
A fine and soft fog crystallises in silence
In the depths of the universe
And a thousand destinies unravel and advance,
The waves of the sea.
Show yourself, my friend, my double
My existence is in your hands
I am not truly human,
I would like a murky existence
An existence like a pond, like a sea,
An existence with seaweed
And coral, and hopes, and bitter worlds
Cheated by the purity of the waves.
Water will run over my corpse
Like a forgotten comet
And I will find a haven,
A dark and protected place.
Avalanche of false reasons
In a meaningless universe,
Evenings full of privation,
The great walls of decadence.
Like a filleted sea-fish,
I gave my organs to the beasts
My torn out intestines
Already far from my head.
Flesh swarms with hope
Like a decomposed steak,
There will be wandering moments
When nothing more will be imposed.
I am as free as a lorry
Crossing driverless
The territories of terror,
I am as free as passion.
The colours of madness
Like an unfinished fetish
Define new seasons,
Non-existence fills the summer.
The sun of the tranquil Buddha
Moved amidst the clouds
We had just left the city,
The sky no longer stormy.
The road passed in the dawn
And the windscreen-wipers vibrated,
I would have liked to see your body again
Before leaving for ever.
The beetroot fields conquered by pylons
Gleamed. We felt strangers to ourselves,
Serene. Rain fell silently, like alms;
Our gentle breathing formed obscure emblems
In the morning sky.
An uncertain future beat in our chests,
Like an Annunciation.
Civilisation was now a mere ruin;
That, we knew.
We had taken the fast lane;
On the bank, big lizards
Slid their absent eyes
Over our translucent corpses.
The network of sensitive nerves
Survives bodily death
I believe in Good News,
In approximate fate.
Exact self-consciousness
Disappears in solitude.
It comes to us, infiniteness;
We will be gods, we will be kings.
We were waiting, serene, alone on the white runway;
A Malian man was packing his few things
He sou
ght a fate far from his desert
And I no longer had any desire for revenge.
The clouds’ indifference
Returns us to our solitudes
And suddenly we are ageless,
We gain altitude.
When tactile illusions disappear
We will be alone, friend, and reduced to ourselves;
With the transition of our bodies towards the extreme,
We will live moments of still horror.
The flatness of the sea
Destroys the will to live;
Far from the sea, from mystery,
I will strive to follow you.
In the mindlessness that takes the place of grace
I see immobile lawns unfold,
Blueish buildings and sterile pleasures
I am the wounded dog, the cleaner
And I am the lifebelt supporting the dead child,
The unlaced shoes cracked by the sun
I am the dark star, the moment of awakening
I am the present moment, I am the north wind.
All happens, all is there, and all is phenomenon,
No event seems justified;
We would need to attain a pure heart;
A white curtain falls and covers the stage.
Contenu
D’abord j’ai trébuché dans un congélateur
HYPERMARCHÉ – NOVEMBRE
APRÈS-MIDI BOULEVARD PASTEUR
CHÔMAGE
‘Le jour monte et grandit’
RÉPARTITION – CONSOMMATION
L’AMOUR, L’AMOUR.
MIDI
‘Comme un week-end en autobus’
JIM
‘J’aime les hôpitaux, asiles de souffrance’
‘Tant de cœurs ont battu’
‘La mort est difficile pour les vieilles dames trop riches’
‘Mon père était un con solitaire et barbare’
FIN DE PARCOURS POSSIBLE
FIN DE SOIRÉE
‘Le lobe de mon oreille droite est gonflé’
Unreconciled Page 6