The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

JACQUES DUPIN

Even If the Mountain

1

Even if the mountain is consumed, even if the survivors kill each other...
Sleep, shepherd. It doesn’t matter where. I will find you. My sleep is the equal of
yours. On the bright slope our flocks are grazing. On the abrupt slope our flocks
are grazing.

2

Outside, charnel-houses fill the beds of rivers lost beneath the earth. The rock,
stripped of its foliage, is sister of the cleaving sky. Event precedes prediction, bird
attacks bird. Inside, under the earth, my hands are grinding colors that have
hardly begun.

3

That which I see, and do not speak of, frightens me. What I speak of, and do not
know, delivers me. Does not deliver me. Will all my nights be enough to decom-
pose this bursting light? O inexorable seen face, hammered by the blind white air!

4

The sheaves refuse my bonds. In this infinite, unanimous dissonance, each ear
of corn, each drop of blood, speaks its language and goes its way. The torch,
which lights the abyss, which seals it up, is itself an abyss.

5

Drunk, having overturned your plow, you took the plowshare for a star, and
the earth agreed with you.

The grass is so high now I no longer know if I am walking, I no longer know if
I am alive.

Does the darkened lamp weigh any less?

6

The stone fields stretch on out of sight, like this unbearable happiness that
binds us, that does not resemble us. I belong to you. You understand me. The
warmth blinds us...