The Hills

One day above Paris
Two big airplanes were fighting
One red the other black
While the sun’s eternal
Plane flashed at the zenith

The one was all my youth
The other the future
This is how furiously
The archangel with shining
Wings fought Lucifer

Calculus to problem
Night to day the way my
Love attacks what I love
The way a hurricane
Roots up trees that cry out

But look everywhere such
Sweetness Paris wakens
Slowly and stretches out
Like a girl shakes her long
Hair and begins her song

Well now where’d my youth go
See the future’s on fire
Listen I’m announcing
The art of prophecy
Is born at last today

Certain people are hills
That rise up in our midst
They can see what’s coming
Better than what’s here clearer
Than what’s already gone

In time’s adornment roads
And seasons go on stay
Don’t stop let serpents hiss
At the south wind in vain
The Psylli and the wave have died

In time’s arrangement if
The machines finally
Learn to think waves of gold
Will break on jeweled shores
Foam be mother again

Eagles are not so high
Flying the human gives
Oceans pleasure vents off
Shade and vertiginous spleen
Till the soul meets its dream

This is the magic time
It’s coming back you wait
Billions of wonders
Still unfabled still
Unimaginable

Deep wells of awareness
Tomorrow we’ll find you out
And who knows what live beings
We’ll lift from the abyss
Along with their universes

Look how the prophets loom
Like blue hills far away
Knowing the exact things
Scientists pretend to
They’ll take us everywhere

To want is to be strong
Let me kiss your forehead
O lithe as a flame you
Suffer all a flame does
All burning all sparkling

In the next age we will
Study our suffering
Not with courage not with
Discipline but knowing
There’s nothing we can do

We’ll find out what’s human
Beyond all we have been
Put both intention and
Strength of will to the test
Without tools or machines

Helpful specters wander
Filtering among us
Since time has caught us up
Nothing ends or begins
See that ring you’re wearing

Time of deserts of crossroads
Time of plazas and hills
I’m here to do some tricks
With a dead talisman
More intricate than life

I’m finally separate
From every natural thing
I can die but I cannot sin
And what no one has touched
I’ve touched it I’ve felt it

And I’ve looked into things
Nobody imagined
I’ve even weighed out life
The unthinkable and
I can die smiling

Often I’ve glided so high so
High goodbye everything
The phantoms the freaks
I can’t admire the boy
Anymore who faked fear

Youth goodbye time’s jasmine
I breathed in your fresh smell
In Rome on flowering carts
Laden with masks garlands
And bells for Carnaval

Goodbye youth white Christmas
When our life was one star
I stared at reflected
In the Mediterranean
Less meteor than pearl

Downy as archangels’
Nests or garlands of clouds
Buffed brighter than halos
Splendors emanations
Single sweet harmonics

I stop to watch a snake
Meandering over
The blazing lawn it’s me
I am the flute I play
Also the whip to flay

A time will come for sorrow
A time too for kindness
Youth goodbye now’s the time
To know the future and
Not die from the knowledge

It’s time for burning grace
By sheer will seven years’
Astonishing trials
Human become divine
More pure more live more wise

Seeking out other worlds
The soul will crinkle up
Like flowers give way to
Lush fruits we’ll see ripen
On hillsides in sunlight

I’m talking about real
Life as only I can
My songs falling as seeds
Be quiet you singers
Don’t mix your chaff with wheat

A vessel came to harbor
A big ship flying flags
There was no one aboard
Except a beautiful vermilion
Woman lying murdered

Once when I asked for alms
All I got was this flame
That burned up to my lips
A torch nothing could snuff
I couldn’t say thank you

Well where are you my friend
Sunk so far in yourself
You left a chasm
So I threw myself in
To the colorless depths

And I can hear my steps
Return down paths no one
Has walked I hear my steps
At all hours there they go
And back now hurrying now slow

Winter you hold the razor
It’s snowing I’m a wreck
I’ve crossed the bright sky life
Is music there the ground
Is too white for my eyes

These wonders I’m announcing
Get used to them like me
To the kindness that rules
To the sorrow I bear
And you’ll know what’s to come

Sorrow and kindness form
The beauty that will be
More perfect than any
Proportion it’s snowing
I’m burning I’m trembling

Now I’m at my table
Writing down what I felt
And what I sang up there
A slender swaying tree
Wind pouring through its hair

A top hat sits there on
A table piled with fruit
Dead gloves near an apple
Madame wrings her own neck
Monsieur swallows himself

Dancers whirl on time’s bedrock
I killed the handsome bandleader
Now I’m peeling an orange
For my friends so they can
Taste amazing fireworks

Everyone’s dead the head
Waiter pours out unreal
Champagne a frothing snail
A poet’s cranium
While a rose is singing

The slave grabs a bare blade
It seems like springs like streams
And every time it falls
It guts a universe
New worlds rush from the wound

The driver holds the wheel
And every time the road
Curves he honks the horn and
There edges into view
A universe untouched

And third number the lady goes
Up in an elevator she
Goes up up forever
The light spreads out she stands
Transfigured in its glow

But these are weak secrets
There are far deeper ones
That soon will be unveiled
Tear you to a hundred
Pieces of single mind

But cry cry and again
We’ll cry to the full moon
Or only crescent cry
Cry and we’ll cry again
Much as we laughed in sun

Arms of gold hold our life
Enter the golden secret
All is nothing but quick flame
The flame unfolds the rose
The rose smells exquisite

                          Translated from the French by Sam Lohmann