a poem by Pascal Galy, translated by Deborah Kéramsi
illustrated with line drawings water-colour tinted by Éric Porte,
was printed in fifty copies in may 1993
© Les Éditions du Rouleau Libre | Pierre Mréjen éditeur Paris, 1993.
Purified
To be a carp on a table-tennis table,
shimmering waterless carp on a ping-pong table,
being available, oneself lost in severed strangeness,
conveyed at the right time to the cruel ear,
pearly tickle of dry earth,
swordstruck spur,
an abyss slides from whole slopes of phenomena,
to the source encountered of a mountain’s eyes
in the flat desert —
on a mattress of rivers’ cases clouds seethe,
a blanket of steel shards,
liquid auction of waterfall failures of the plain —
The sheet enrobes it, flight of eyes scattering sheds
carnation earth, a fish in a basket.