JEAN TARDIEUThe Fly and the Ocean
A fly swayed
Above an ocean.
Suddenly it felt
Caught up in the cold.
Moral:Always pay attention.
—david kelley
Days
In a city of darkness caught up in time
(each building crumbles in time before its time)
with all my shadows I went in and went out.
Suns in their thousands rose as from a river bed,
a thousand sunsets coloured the towering walls;
I followed hands on the balconies’ edge;
forms faded (bearing the brunt of light)
or fell into oblivion (with the turning rays).
Days and days... Who then sighs and who calls,
and to what feast what torture or what pardon?
—david kelley
The Seine in Paris
Since I prefer rivers to regrets
the grave profundity of monuments to memories,
love the water’s flow dividing cities,
the Seine in Paris knows me deeply faithful
to its gentle book-lined quays. Not a breath
arrives defeated by the eddying waters
but that I am ready to take it and to read again
in its hair the mountain song, not a
summer night-time silence but that I glide
like a leaf between air and water, not a white
gull’s wing returned from the sea pursuing the sun
but that I am wrenched from the weight of my monotony
by a strident cry! The pillars weigh heavy
after the unnecessary step and I plunge