Thirteen Poems

from LA NUIT GRANDISSANTE
translated by Stephen Romer

As long as my speech is dark he breathes

his arms plunge into icy water
between seaweed towards other prey
icy as lamps in daylight

So little reality reaches the living
whether he does violence or sows
boldly on the stone and the waters

the taut sky the scansion of hammerblows
certain among us interceding
to cause new clouds

*

He does not know where this breeze takes him
or this arm, both mine, and that's the price
of our misalliance
of our effacement up to the fork
...