The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

DANIELLE COLLOBERT

I Time of What

I time of what
the flood
wave riding a gaze
unflaggingly from I liquid marked red
fragments imperceptible to the little eye of time vision useless
on space never more than a large field
the rest open to the drifter the celestial visions
sucking nourishment from sentences toothless
I grinder sounds syllables magma tremors
or beaten by the tidal wave adrift in substratum syntax
days of passion
light of veins unveiled
on the surface the articulation
I said energy blazing the scream or as burns left unsaid
—michael tweed

For Which the Sun

for which the sun sometimes music on vast sky of open
flat on its back the isolate
the severed probably just for fun drawing upon the thrust of the bearable
from that side from deep enough the writing on the body
I etching of the sandy the instant e√aced
pushing the fever to the resonating lips the gong
or a buzzing bull-roarer fleeing the head
or drums of survival
or dry desert dust bombs
and the flames always licking the body of fear
I of insect living nailed to the wall
seeking living to su√er more
dreaming it nightly
in light of the definitive
—michael tweed