Theatre

I

I’d see you quicken on the terraces,
I’d see you wrestle at the wind,
The cold cut blood your lips.

I’ve seen you break broad breathlessly at being dead, More Beautiful Than Lightning,
when lightning lacquers blank panes with your blood.

II

Senescent summer chapped you with its drab, a monotone of joy, we scorned the scarred intoxication life’s.

“Rather ivy,” you would state, “adhesion to the stones of night: presence without outlet, face sans root.

“Last pane delighted nail sun’s decimates, but rather in tor village in to die.

“Rather wind...”

III

It was a question of a wind that stiffer than recall,
Stupor gowns’ and crying stones’—and you at foreflame flew,
Head Cartesian ruled hand flue wide all
In quest of death on drums pulserunning of your gesturings.

It was the daylight of your breasts
And finally you reigned and in absentia from my mind.

IV

I wake, and rain. The wind is spearing you, Douve, coniferous and moor in dormancy by me. I’m at terrace, in a pit of death. In leaves of great dogs quail.

The arm you lift, alarm, to door, it lights me down the ages. Village of the embers, I each instant see you born, Douve,

At each instant die.

V

The arm you lift as well the arm one turns
Are to a time but to our dullness wits,
And but with drawn the drapes verdure and mud
There rests remain but flames of kingdom Death.

The leg unvested where the loud wind stabs
Ahead it driving headlong rainheads thresh
Will light to limen you come kingdom’s hold,
Douve’s gestures, slowly gestures, gestures black.

VI

What pallor mints you, river underdown, what artery of you explodes, where echo of your fall rebounds?

The arm you raise at sudden splays, takes flames. Your face recurls. What brumal densing wrests me your regard? Slow escarp of shades, frontier of death.

The mute arms bower you, an arbor of another shore.

VII

Casualty confounded in the leaves,
But baffled by the blood of passing paths,
Yet to live’s abettor.

I’ve seen you beached aback the battle’s end
To diffident aporch to silence, waves,
And mouth astain with stars finality
To crack acry the dread, your night’s surveil.

Oh, lift to hard air sudden like a rock
A gesture lovely as of coal.

VIII

The song’s absurd commences in the hands and in the knees, then the crashing in the head, the lifting lilts below the lips, and its conviction lace the versant underground the face.

At present time is out of joint the joinery of face. At present time is ratcheting the wrenching out of view.

IX

White below the insect ceiling, bad light and at profile phase,
Your gown in spite by venom of the lamps,
I discover you extent,
Your mouth aloft above a river detonates far off, on earth.

Being discomposed put to by being indestructible,
Presence recomposed in torch of cold,
Oh watcher, ever I disclose you dead,
Douve: Phoenix, I am watchkeep in this cold.

X

I see Douve extent. The height of carnal space, I hear her rustling. Black princes race their mandibles through space where hands of Douve unskein, bones unfleshed of their intwine web grey arachnid massive lights.

XI

Covert: silence: humus of the world—
Toiled: the rays arachnid of alive—
Already: in submit to slip to sand—
All: for knowledged four-slit secrecy.

Invested for the festival of non
And teeth undraped as if it were for love,

The fountain death, mine, present, unendure.

XII

I see Douve extent. In the scarlit city of the air, where combat branches battle fore her face, and where the roots rout passage to her mass—she rays delight an insect shrill and in the horror song.

Apace ablack and of the earth, Douve, ravage worn, ecstatic, rejoins the gnarl lamp of the tablelands.

XIII

Your face this evening lighted by the earth,
And yet I see your eyes to putrefy
And word face is no longer of a sense.

The inward sea’s alight by eagles’ turns,
This is an image.
And I hold you cold to depths where images unfix.

XIV

I see Douve extent. In a chamber ivory, plasters circle undereyes, the mouth gone gyre, and sentence hands to lush of grass; the grass incursions her on every front.

Door opens. Orchestra advance. And eyes of aspect, gemcut, flue to thoraxes, luxuriant, the heads cold billed, of mandibles, are inundate to her.

XV

Oh, indued with profile where earth’s dead set,
I witness you undo.

Bare grass on your lips, the lit of flint
Compound your final smile.

At deep lore frit
The antique bestiary of the mind.

XVI

Household of a humble flame, where our declivities collide! Below the vault, I view you dawn, still Douve, catch death net perpendicular.

Douve ingeniused, in invert: apace of suns through space funest, she slow makes her assent to nether ranks.

XVII

Ravine pries at the mouth now,
Five fingers fan haphazard in the forest now,
The first head flows through grasses now,
The gorge decored with snow and wolves and now,
The eyes give vent on those the voyagers of death and it is we in wind in water in the frigid now.

XVIII

Precision presence that no flame could ever hitherto restrain; conveyor of secluded cold; alive, of but that blood reborn and blown by poem self decimates.

It was needful that you thus appear upon the deafen margins, at the funest where where your own lucency wears worse, that you suffer trial.

Oh, most lovely and your laugh it’s death insteps! I dare now to convene with you, I can sustain the flame commission at your gestures’ light.

XIX

Initial day of cold, our head escapes
As if a convict flee to atmosphere,
But in an instant Douve that arrow dive
And shatter at the ground the palms of crown.

Thus would we reincarnate our commit,
But head gainsaid we cup a water cold,
And sheaves of death are ticketing your smile,
Attempted cleft in denseness of the world.

—Yves Bonnefoy (trans: Mark Daniel Cohen)

© Mark Daniel Cohen—Nietzsche Circle, 2007

(published in Hyperion: On the Future of Aesthetics, a web publication of The Nietzsche Circle: www.nietzschecircle.com, October 2007)