PHILIPPE JACCOTTETWe ask ourselves what image he sees passing
in the mirror of the snows, what flame he sees glimmering,
and whether he finds a door half open at the back.
We imagine that in those distances it might be so:
a candle burning in a mirror, the hand
of a woman close, an opening.. .)
But you, such as I find you here,
you will no longer have the strength to drink from those crystal flutes,
you will be deaf to the bells of those high towers,
blind to those beacons that turn as the sun turns,
unfit for the navigation of such narrow straits...
Easier to imagine you labouring in crevasses of clay
sweating the death-sweats, foundering,
not lifted up towards those proud and final swans...
—I am not convinced we shall make that journey now
nor escape the shadow of the axe
once the wings of sight have ceased to beat.
Passers-by. We shall not be seen on these roads again
any more than we have ever seen our dead
or even their shades...
Their bodies are ash,
ash their shades and their memory and the ashes themselves
a nameless faceless wind disperses them
and the wind itself, what e√aces it?
Nonetheless
in passing we shall have heard again and still
these bird-cries under the clouds
in the silence of an empty October noon,
these scattered cries, near and yet seeming very far away
(they are rare because the cold
advances like a shadow behind the ploughing rain),
they measure space...
And passing underneath them
it seems to me they have spoken, not asked anything or called
but answered. Under the low clouds of October.
Already it is another day and I am elsewhere,