The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

MALCOLM DE CHAZAL

The rain is a pin of water, and a needle of light, in the dice of the wind

Rose-color, the milk teeth of the sun.

The human voice is the noon of sounds.

—mary ann caws

Plastic Sense

Sensuality is the most powerful feeling of speed we can have.

The nose is all back: the nose always seems to be looking into the face. The
nose only takes on a real face when someone is laughing.

The human gaze is a lighthouse sailing around.

When a man’s spitting, he’s spitting out his saliva. Water when it’s spitting, is
spitting out its mouth.

Countercurrents create faces in the water, but faces whose traits come one
after the other any which way, as in the ‘‘fluid’’ faces of stupid people.

Hypocrisy gives crow’s-feet to the gaze.

If you could drum on the human voice, like a diaphragm you shake, you’d get
the voice of water.

The gaze is the longest rake.

The absolute new is the total nude.

Fog gives a round shape to every noise. Every voice in the fog takes on a
cheerful tone.

Space is the widest of all mouths.

Death is a ‘‘loss of breath’’ in steps. Voluptuousness is a ‘‘loss of breath’’ in a
circle.

Blue is the essence of the neat. After a long look at a blue sky, we have our eyes
washed and stopped up. After his bath, man has a blue gaze.