Back to Ribemont-Dessaignes index


CHILDHOOD

Whether I fell from the sky or came up from the earth,
from out of the waves, the weather, flowers, appearing
without having been given
any sort of preparation -
where are you, the hand that set me down
in front of my own
regard, with only myself
as guardian?
Where are you,
garden of my childhood,
when I knew nothing and I was everything,
the earth where the eye that I am was sown
in the sands of a destiny, and which became
an immense world borne by an angel
or perhaps just that egg, balanced on the top
of a fountain of water, juggling with its own
void, awaiting
the gunshot of the night -
Oh! return to sender unknown?
I had all the powers of life.
I had drunk from the milk of the way
that runs through the sky and
naked between my wings
I rose up over a painted, crazy island, with a star
between my teeth, commanding
flutes of darkness, drums of light, and serpents were born
because I had given them a name
and tree-frogs sang next to my eyes
with the voice of my soul, like Dalila,
longing to know its own secret.
What did it matter, my secret, my life, my blood?
What did it matter my weakness? I was my weakness,
I was a tree-frog, my desire,
I was what I had given a name to -
Oh force that is stronger than sight
existence that devours its name,
and I trembled between my wings
and a void moved into the place where I was,
a void stronger than existence and,
falling like Lucifer from Paradise,
still all powdered with rays of light and with stars,
but already fixing the constantly
changing reality on the void with a bow
and its arrows and a lance, I saw,
appearing in front of me,
the doorway of hell, and so,
a child dried out by the sun of my horrified
amazement, polished by the live
coals of the night,
hard, clean, lost in love, and heavy
like an angel made of platinum and dizziness
on the lips of the void split open by a sign,
I waited, I waited, I waited. 

                                                                               Next