The Spectral Attitudes

I attach no importance to life

I pin not the least of life's butterflies to importance

I do not matter to life

But the branches of salt the white branches

All the shadow bubbles

And the sea-anemones

Come down and breathe within my thoughts

They come from tears that are not mine

From steps I do not take that are steps twice

And of which the sand remembers the flood-tide

The bars are in the cage

And the birds come down from far above to sing before these bars

A subterranean passage unites all perfumes

A woman pledged herself there one day

This woman became so bright that I could no longer see her

With these eyes which have seen my own self burning

I was then already as old as I am now

And I watched over myself and my thoughts like a night watchman in an immense factory Keeping watch alone

The circus always enchants the same tramlines

The plaster figures have lost nothing of their expression

They who bit the smile's fig

I know of a drapery in a forgotten town

If it pleased me to appear to you wrapped in this drapery

You would think that your end was approaching

Like mine

At last the fountains would understand that you must not say Fountain

The wolves are clothed in mirrors of snow

I have a boat detached from all climates

I am dragged along by an ice-pack with teeth of flame

I cut and cleave the wood of this tree that will always be green

A musician is caught up in the strings of his instrument

The skull and crossbones of the time of any childhood story

Goes on board a ship that is as yet its own ghost only

Perhaps there is a hilt to this sword

But already there is a duel in this hilt

During the duel the combatants are unarmed

Death is the least offence

The future never comes

The curtains that have never been raised

Float to the windows of houses that are to be built

The beds made of lilies

Slide beneath the lamps of dew

There will come an evening

The nuggets of light become still underneath the blue moss

The hands that tie and untie the knots of love and of air

Keep all their transparency for those who have eyes to see

They see the palms of hands

The crowns in eyes

But the brazier of crown and palms

Can scarcely be lit in the deepest part of the forest

There where the stags bend their heads to examine the years

Nothing more than a feeble beating is heard

From which sound a thousand louder or softer sounds proceed

And the beating goes on and on

There are dresses that vibrate

And their vibration is in unison with the beating

When I wish to see the faces of those that wear them

A great fog rises from the ground

At the bottom of the steeples behind the most elegant reservoirs of life and of wealth

In the gorges which hide themselves between two mountains

On the sea at the hour when the sun cools down

Those who make signs to me are separated by stars

And yet the carriage overturned at full speed

Carries as far as my last hesitation

That awaits me down there in the town where the statues of bronze

and of stone have changed places with statues of wax Banyans banyans.