True Name

I will name desert castle what you were,
The night, the voice, the absency, your face,
And when you’ll plummet in the sterile earth
I’ll nomenclate nil lightning’s carted you.

To die a countryside you loved. I come
In infinitely on your dimlit ways.
I decimate desire, your form, recall,
Your enemy and pitiless to be.

I will denominate you war, I’ll seize
The liberalities of war and have
In hands your face obscurancy transpierced,
In heart this country storming lumifies.

—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)