«1 Just going out for a minute — / left your work (which the idle / call chaos) behind on the table. / And left the chair behind when you went where? I ask around all Paris, for it’s / only in stories or pictures / that people rise to the skies: / where is your soul gone, where? In...»
«2 Useless with eyes like nails to / penetrate the black soil. / As true as a nail in the mind / you are not here, not here. It's useless turning my eyes / and fumbling round the whole sky. / Rain. Pails of rain-water. But / you are not there, not there. Neither one of the two. Bone is...»
«3 Because once when you were young and bold / you did not leave me to rot alive among / bodies without souls or fall dead among walls / I will not let you die altogether. Because, fresh and clean, you took me / out by the hand, to freedom and brought spring leaves / in bundles into my ho...»
«4 The blow muffled through years of / forgetting, of not knowing: / That blow reaches me now like the song of a / woman, or like horses neighing. Through an inert building, a song of passion and / the blow comes: / dulled by forgetfulness, by not knowing which is / a soundless thicket....»