Wednesday, September 18, 2019

PIERRE CHAPPUIS ~








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