The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

CLAIRE LEJEUNE

So Where

So where will the crowning text be?

Issued from the book: coronation? Consecration? Desecration?

Crown cli√ where the book arrives at quest’s end. Ultimate contraction where the
realm explodes, where the third devises...

Felt up until now the book as a growing tension from which it would make itself
fire and blood: the book my war. This morning seized my life like a round coin, a
franc which might have been hammered from my metal. Received the seal of the
book as a receipt of my integrity. I am free.

To greet yourself, that’s the work of the seventh day.
—renée linkhorn and judy cockran

Death, I Speak of It

Death, I speak of it
Just as I would speak of dollars and pesetas
Though I have never set foot in America,
Though in my blood there flows a virgin Spain
Like the flavor of a ripe pomegranate,
Though I have never tasted pomegranate...

I speak of death
As I pronounce my name;
It is a very old habit,
It is deathly to speak of it...

Yet there is a kind that no one speaks of
Because it is naked and cannot be clothed.
Death sunk like a fist in a pillow:
The last look on my mother’s face.

Then there is a kind that blossoms inside,
Breathes me in, absorbs me, feeds on me,
The kind that is my other Life.

The kind of death that no one speaks of.
—renée linkhorn and judy cockran