The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

EMMANUEL HOCQUARD

without questions be
and what are the questions about.
You are not a question, but surrounded by kinds
of questions.
Is it snowing how do wolves howl.
Yes, Viviane.
Not answering any question
could one say that yes and to be are one.
Now yes.
‘‘I felt I understood.’’
Yes
could be the missing word.

III

Viviane is Viviane, yes.
Tautology does not say all but yes.
Yes and all are not equivalents. Every yes fills the
space of language, which for all that does not
form a whole.
One would not obtain a sum by adding up these
yeses.
What if we subtracted all from our vocabulary.
Those wolves do not sing in chorus.
The space filled by their scraps of voices is a
broken space.
Heaps of little spaces in juxtaposition
sing
around the points.

XXV

I write that in order to write this. What is written
is so twice over.
What you read, is it two?
Between two there is a field whose form turns
between us.
This hole is boundless.
Around this hole, the song of the birds
comprehends day breaks on one 11th of April.
Night is contained in the silence of the black and
white goat is dead.