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YOUNG PAN


You're right, there are
1003 of them,
we feed, we lodge, we listen to,
whether they are angels or demons or phantoms,
living or dead, larvae
with a thousand feet,
swaggering rogues, soft whisperings,
but if you question the shadows,
facing those invisible
corridors,
only bats fly out,
brushing against your solitary face,
and you are nothing more
than a sad cage with an open eye
sleeping on its perch.

I was that child, armed with a thousand arrows,
hunting the clouds,
the open pits, the storms,
horizons, unknown passers by, crows -
suddenly broken
by a drunken delight
when he breathes the bursting
body of a flower
with butterfly wings
held to his face by an enchantment more
deceitful than a trap.

I was that king of the world, that king
of kings, carrying in his heart, in his head, in all
the parts of his body
treasures of joy - gold,
frankincense and myrrh - I sang
and I danced before
the seven-coloured ark, and I wept
with my hands outstretched
since so many beautiful things
had no master other than my own
freedom and so many things
had been offered me
that I didn't know whom
to give them to.

Someone passed in the mirror and said
This age is cruel and tender -
not all the toys have been broken.

Shut up, you passer by. Everything was given to me,
and God was given to me,
but I was a falcon in a sky on fire -
Lord God, to whom do you want me to give you,
all these treasures that we have, to whom should they be given?
Everything is mine, Lord, and you are mine, Lord.

For it is I who made it all,
I who said what others were to say,
I gave things their name,
you too, I gave you your name,
and it could drive me mad,
I am overwhelmed with my creatures,
and my heart overflows with love,
to whom should I give all these treasures?
You don't reply, Lord.
I am the one who speaks, and who replies.
I embraced your cross, Lord,
like the stones on the path,
like the flowers in these gardens,
like the shadow on dust,
like the water on the river -
you don't reply, Lord,
one doesn't create for nothing, my God,
those lovely lands, those horizons,
the rumblings of the oceans,
those pumpkins and those crickets,
all those rats that move in the night,
those fantasies, those ghosts,
and you too, sitting on your cloud,
have I created all that in vain?
Lord, where then is your reply?

I had to weep over the silence.
I put a stop
to the succession of the days. 

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