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'Only you word will
heal the injury.'
Chaucer 'Rondel of
Merciless Beauty'
You arrive without a word,
you go without the slightest smile,
leaving in the brightest summer bedroom
the fragile traces of your soul
and the fresh scent of your grief!
Like a ghost, I haunt the long corridors
redolent of quince and lavender!
Then I stop, break off a piece
of my solitude and press it against my lips
like a freshly baked loaf!
Outside, a fire of swallows
whose memories are undivided
burns through the air,
and time's engulfed by
the scars of thoughts
like a vast premonition of the unknown!
What can I do? Who can I call?
No one comes to mind.
Meanwhile, the essence of things
passes endlessly, silently through the sieve
of tears.
Voices I could touch, foreign voices
come and unload their shrill concerns
into July's unbroken song.
Translated from the French by Norton
Hodges
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