The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

ANDRÉ DU BOUCHET

... the heart of the mountain will be stone
or water.
—hoyt rogers

The Light of the Blade

This glacier that creaks

to utter

the cool of the earth

without breathing.

Like paper flat against this earth,
or a bit above the earth,
like a blade I stop breathing. At night I return to
myself, for a moment, to utter it.

In place of the tree.

In the light of the stones.

I saw, all along the day,

the dark blue rafter that bars the day rise up to reach us in the motionless light.

I walk in the gleams of dust
that mirror us.

In the short blue

breath

of the clattering air

far from breath

the air trembles and clatters.

—paul auster