The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

PASCALLE MONNIER

A great weight.
An arm will rise only slowly, rarely.
The shadows around us will shift.
They will be big and very black.
Very dark.
We’ll be surrounded by our shadows.
Escorted by our shadows.
In the mornings, the shadow around the tree will be small and bright,
evenings, great and dark.
The tree will cast shade.
When the branches sway, they will shift the shadows of the branches.
The air will be hard, heavy, slow and the scents around us will float.
We’ll barely be moving.
We’ll watch.
The branches that sway and sweep through the shadows.
The bright shadow of morning and black shadow of evening.
Mornings, the sky will be blue, white at noon, then again blue, then black,
very black.
The trees too will be black.
There will be no more green.
Red flowers will spring from the soil.
No more softness, no more scent, slowness.
—cole swensen

Winter

1

It’s winter. Humid and cold. White or grey.
Fog and clouds.
Grey lines above grey lines,
White clouds against a white sky
And steeples nearly black against a white sky.
Steaming rivers, drops of water,
The smell of leaves bunched up and humid,
Lukewarm smell of rotting leaves,
The vague smell of a dog and also the cooing of pigeons.
The smell of muddied dogs and the smell of puddles of mud.
The grey water of muddied puddles. The fog smells of aniseed.
The smell of humidity and a white sky. The cold.
—serge gavronsky