HENRI MICHAUXSlices of Knowledge
If your child has a trunk on its nose, be not afraid of elephants.
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There he who is bored grows encased in a cyst. At least that’s a few years won...He cuts o√ her head with a saber of water then pleads not guilty and the crime
disappears with the weapon that flows away.
It is not rare for the son of a Zoo Director to be born with palmate feet. It is
nevertheless, like all misfortunes, a surprise.
While the child is evacuated towards the Far North where it is hoped he will
blend in with the presentation of a more appropriate nature, the family, once
secretive, becomes extremely, infinitely secretive. Who can boast of having inti-
mate knowledge of a Zoo Director’s family?
When a one-eyed man arrives at the station of the lame, there is a gathering.
And if it’s a paralytic who arrives, there is a gathering, there is discontent, there is
ill will in the expressions and contentment in the devil and salvation on earth.
But he is driven out of the station and the station surrounds, for it is not his
station, with scorn and commands that he go elsewhere because what is more he
has found someone in the net of pity who will drag him about wherever he
wishes to go. Let him leave, profiting from his exorbitant good luck. The station
of the lame is su≈ciently crowded.
***The elephant with a fractured pelvis wishes he were small, very small, small as a
very young spider whom the wind whisks away, whirls away, raises up in the heav-
ens of ease, of prolongations, of perpetuation, far, far, far beyond the plumes and
plushes and spherules, without a bone weighing more than an eyelash, without any
bones, without needing any bones, into life, into life in the air, into life born again.
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I was the mortal who said: ‘‘First I want to hibernate.’’
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When the sound becomes acute, throw the gira√e into the sea.
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