With smooth stretches, with dimples,
with puckers.
Sliding along,
smitten by its own force.
A stream, blazing furnace.
At eye level,
the sun has gone back to bed.
( vanishing point )
Rain — to speak
through the foliage
without raising one's voice.
Leaves — to smooth out
word by word
the worn silk of their brooding.
( May, the month of May )
Close
surveillance of the water
and the sky nearby.
Flying in veers, in swerves.
Crossing, criss-crossing
the stitches of the wind
as far as the eye can see.
( swallows, recovering their territory )
With a stroke, with a shriek, every which way
taking out the tacking threads from the wind.
Playful
arrogant swallows
panicked by an invisible obstacle.
( idem )
Smooth in its speechlessness,
the vast plain of the daylight
opens out.
Slack, motionless,
yet with no fixed point,
like one coming back to oneself.
(a new )
Fording.
Haze and light,
from these heights draped
to the other shore — invisible.
The gaze hardly alights.
( in one stroke )
Beyond the haze,
gentle,
the mountain climbs back up its slope.
Vaguely,
in the heat,
sways.
( from the window )
Stars in summer
in the trees.
Trills,
night-time outbursts.
( before the whole night )
Calls and responses
cry out above our heads.
Laths — your support, where is it?
Musical roof frame
ever being renovated.
( mentally, Paul Klee )
Wall
like, at eye level,
the base of the night
blocking the view.
( non-place )
Steeple, willows,
jagged shore.
Children's luminous
outbursts.
Impalpable hubbub.
( a whole )
At high noon,
in summer,
they are walking through the snow.
At the edge of the road
sparkles
a gravel pile
— a pothole.
( July, high up )
Cut wheat.
The light, on the ground,
carries the night.
( midsummer )
Ice
at the heart of summer.
The darkness
of devouring daylight.
Heat
like a raised stone.
( split in two )
Shadow, daytime ink
like a brushwood made
of golden-headed needles.
Will you last, rampart,
with your thousand open cracks?
Anthracite is such dense
daylight, ready to explode.
( daylight fluting through )
Gleeful
gulls have alighted,
as if at he edge of the path,
on a line of reeds
they crease for the pleasure of it.
( propitious white stones )
Taut all day long
the bow of the summer
—noises and echoing sounds—
joins thetwo extremes.
Motionlessness of the heat.
( sonorous space )
_____________________
Pierre Chappuis
Like Bits of Wind
Seagull Books
