Yves Bonnefoy

They said to me no, don’t take any, no, don’t touch, that is burning hot. No, don’t try to touch, to hold, that weighs too much, that hurts. They said to me: Read, write. And I tried, I took up a word, but it struggled, it clucked like a frightened hen, wounded, in a cage of black straw, spotted with old traces of   blood. Translated from the French

Columns, arches, vaults: how he knew The ways you promise what you lack; And that your bodies, like your souls, Always slip from our grasping hands. Space is such a lure . . . Swift to disappoint, As they raise and topple clouds, the sky's Architects still offer more than ours, Who only build a scaffolding of dreams. He dreamed, all the same; but on that day, He gave a better use to beauty's shapes: He understood that form means to die. And this, his final work, is a coin With both sides bare. He made in stone, Of this great room, the arrow and the bow.

A clamor, in the distance. A crowd running under the rain beating down, between the canvases the sea wind set clattering. A man passes crying something. What is he saying? What he knows! What he has seen! I make out his words. Ah, I almost understand! I took refuge in a museum. Outside the great wind mixed with water reigns alone from now on, shaking the glass panes. In each painting, I think, it’s as if  God were giving up on finishing the world. Translated from the French