Six Makeshift Trees translated by Marilyn Hacker
Six Makeshift Trees around My Bathtub

Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

Man part animal part flower part metal part human
                                                    ‘The Approximate Man’, Tristan Tzara

*

Above our heads                    a vertical shadow
                                                                  vibrates
a shadow that flaps above our heads
a clandestine whistling
on the arid plain                        above our overloaded
                                                                    heads

and while there’s that whistling     that whistling
                                               unanticipated
as our buzzing skulls
a cement roof accommodates our moods
                  on the makeshift platform
                          the constellation set adrift
in the fog of the senses
...