The Salamander

I

And now you’re Douve in summer’s chambered last.

A salamander flickers on the wall. Its fleece and human head sheds summer death. “I want to founder to in you, slim life,” Douve cry. “Lightning vacance, run my lips, come run me through!”

“I love mine own selfblind, to sift to me to earth. I love no longer knowing which cold teeth mine own.”

II

Through night I’d vision ligneous of you, Douve, better by to feed you into flame. Green statue wedlocked bark, the better by delight in your ignescent head.

Between the digits weigh debate between the igneous and lips; I saw you cast me smiles. Though broad daylight you ember blind to me.

III

“Regard me, and regard me, I have run!”

I’m near you, Douve, and I let light your way. Now nothing stands between us but this lithic lamp, small shade assuage, our hands the shade await. Salamander start, you dwell in immobility.

Have lived the instant in the fleshest near the most to hand transmutes to knowingness.

IV

Thus, would we keep wake upon the peak of night of be. There thicket gave.

Concealed erupt, by what blood bird did you cut rounds our dark?

To chamber which did you rejoin and where the horror of the dawn wore worsen on the panes?

—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)