Allées et venues

Coming and Going:

As long as you believe in miracles

You watch the sun fall into the sea

Every evening

Then you turn your back and sink

Among the ferns sparkling from a moon or from the other

Night up to your knees under the vault of cries.   

 

The pubescent monkeys, the adolescent pumas

Contemplate the slender crescent

Of the earth

In the eyes of a dead viper

That knots on the asphalt

The alpha of a future alphabet.   

 

It’s the end of night the mosquitoes

Place themselves on your forehead and die with you

In the ruins of your dreams erected

By the distant suggestions of cities

Where you wish to find an empty

Bed to die in.   

 

The cathedrals the cinemas the soliloquies

The beggar’s ear glued to the violin

Music

To be lovesick when the songs

All temple prostitutes all rotgut for two cents

Are going to end up in the pink slit of a jukebox.   

 

Hope is under the hand that weak flesh

Groped massaged turgescent with eyes shut

Comes and goes

Let’s keep knotted kisses to ourselves for a long time

Until another day erases

The trace of each passing.

Pierre Martory (translated By John Ashbery).