The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

CLAUDE DE BURINE

Greet You

Greet you
The way carnations are thrown
In summer
On keen slabs.

Name you
The way a fire is lit
In an empty street.

Touch you
The way bread is touched
When it alone brings life.
— martin sorrell

But When I Have

But when I have closed my eyes
When you lie beneath the violets
Or brambles like me
When the clouds above us
Will take shape and crumble like us,
Who will speak for us?
Who will say: ‘‘You, your eyes
Are the colour of dreaming
And young slates
Which tile the Spring of rains.

And you: Your skin
Is the thrush singing,
Your hands my warmth
And summer’s fever
Which bears your name.’’

Time goes where it will
Puts down its costume of jonquils
And water where it will,
We have nothing more
Than a butterfly wing drying
Against night’s windows.
We are nothing more than a dust