Vigilance

The tottering Saint Jacques tower in Paris

In the semblance of a sunflower

Strikes the Seine sometimes with its forehead and its shadow glides

Imperceptibly among the riverboats

At that moment on tiptoe in my slumbers

I turn towards the room in which I lie

Setting it alight

So that nothing’s left of that acquiescence wrung from me

Pieces of furniture change then to identically-sized creatures

Which gaze fraternally towards me

Lions whose manes serve to consume the chairs

Sharks whose white bellies incorporate the last quiver of the sheets

At the hour of love and blue eyelids

I see myself burn in turn I see this solemn hiding place of nothingness

That was my body

Probed by the patient beaks of fiery ibises

When all is over I enter the ark invisibly

Heedless of passers-by whose dragging feet sound far away

I see the ridges of sunlight

Through the rain of hawthorn

I hear the human fabric tear like a large leaf

Beneath the claw of conspiring presence and absence

All looms fade away leaving only a scented lace

A shell of lace in the form of a perfect breast

I touch only the heart of things I grasp the thread.

∞