Brilliant Sky
Never between the branches has the sky
burned with such brilliance, as if
it were offering all of its light to me,
as if it were trying to speak to me,
to say - what? what urgent mystery
strains at that transparent mouth?
No leaf, no rustle . . . It's in winter,
in cold emptiness and silence, that the air
suddenly arches itself like this into infinity,
and glitters.
This evening, far from here,
a friend is entering his death,
he knows it, he walks
under bare trees alone,
perhaps for the last time. So much love,
so much struggle, spent and worn thin.
But when he looks up, suddenly the sky
is arrayed in this same vertiginous clarity.
The End Of Summer
Time
which will
take us
we take
sometimes
by the tail
like a handsome blue
lizard which deftly
breaks itself off
For one wild moment
it gleams
between our fingers
2 poems by Jean Joubert, translated from the French by Denise Levertov and contained in her collection Oblique Prayers.
