Unreconciled Read online

  Objects well-arranged and life completely empty

  The evening shopping, leftover groceries,

  TV without watching, meals without appetite

  Finally illness, making it all the more sordid,

  And the tired body mixing with the earth,

  The unloved body dying without mystery.

  Death is difficult for old ladies who are too rich

  Surrounded by daughters-in-law who call them ‘my dear’,

  They press a linen handkerchief to their magnificent eyes,

  Assess the paintings and antique furniture.

  I prefer the deaths of the council-flat old

  Who imagine till the end that they are loved,

  Awaiting the visit of hypothetical sons

  Who would pay for a coffin in authentic pine.

  The too-rich old ladies end up in the cemetery

  Surrounded by cypresses and plastic shrubs

  It’s a nice walk for sixtysomethings,

  The cypresses smell good and repel mosquitos.

  The council-flat old end up at the crematorium

  In a little cabinet with a white label.

  The building is calm: nobody, not even on Sundays,

  Disturbs the sleep of the old black caretaker.

  My dad was a solitary and barbarous cunt;

  Drunk with disappointment, alone in front of the TV,

  He chewed over fragile and very bizarre plans,

  Finding great joy in seeing them collapse.

  He always treated me like a rat you hunt;

  The mere idea of a son, I think, revolted him,

  He could not bear that one day I’d overtake him

  Just by staying alive while he croaked.

  He died in April, moaning and perplexed;

  His eyes revealed an infinite anger;

  Every three minutes he insulted my mother,

  Criticised spring, sniggered about sex.

  At the end, just before the last agony,

  A brief calm passed through his chest;

  He smiled, saying: ‘I bathe in my urine’,

  Then expired with a faint groan.

  POSSIBLE JOURNEY’S END

  Why be anxious? I’ll have lived all the same,

  And observed clouds and people

  I’ve participated little, I’ve known everything all the same

  Especially in the afternoon, there have been moments.

  The configuration of garden furniture

  I’ve known very well, for want of innocence;

  Supermarkets and urban routes,

  The immobile boredom of holidays.

  I’ll have lived here, at this century’s end,

  And my journey hasn’t always been painful

  (Sun on the skin and the burns of being);

  I want to rest on the impassive grass.

  Like the grass I am old and of this time,

  Spring fills me with insects and illusions

  I too will have lived, tortured and serene,

  The last years of a civilisation.

  EVENING’S END

  At evening’s end, the rise of nausea is an inevitable phenomenon. There is a sort of schedule of horror. Well, I don’t know; I’m thinking.

  The expansion of an internal void. That’s it. Detachment from any possible event. As if you were suspended in the void, equidistant from any real action, by monstrously powerful magnetic forces.

  Thus suspended, unable to have any concrete grasp on the world, the night might seem long to you. It will be, in fact.

  It will, however, be a protected night; but you will not appreciate this protection. You will only appreciate it later, once you have returned to the city, returned to the daytime, returned to the world.

  Around nine o’clock, the world will already have reached its full level of activity. It will turn smoothly, with a faint purr. You will have to take part in it, leap – a bit like when you jump onto the step of a train moving out of the station.

  You will not succeed. Once again, you will wait for the night – once again, however, it will bring you exhaustion, uncertainty and horror. And that will begin again, every day, until the end of the world.

  My right earlobe is swollen with pus and blood. Sitting in front of a red plastic squirrel symbolising humanitarian action in favour of the blind, I think of the imminent rotting of my body. Another form of suffering I know very little about and that remains, practically in its entirety, for me to discover. I think equally and symmetrically, albeit in a more imprecise fashion, of the rotting and decline of Europe.

  Attacked by illness, the body no longer believes in any possibility of appeasement. Feminine hands, now useless. Still desired, all the same.

  At the corner of the FNAC seethed

  A very dense and very cruel crowd,

  A fat dog chewed a white pigeon’s body.

  Further along, in the alleyway,

  An old bag-lady curled up in a ball

  Received in silence the children’s spit.

  I was alone in the Rue de Rennes. The electric signs

  Coaxed me down vaguely erotic paths:

  Hello it’s Amandine.

  It did nothing for my prick and balls.

  A few chavs threw menacing looks

  At the loaded babes and the dirty mags;

  Some executives were consuming; their only function.

  And you weren’t there. I love you, Véronique.

  You would have to pass through a lyrical universe

  Like you pass through a body you have loved

  You would have to awaken the oppressed powers

  The thirst for eternity, uncertain and pathetic.

  Afternoon of false joy,

  And bodies that split

  You no longer desire me much,

  Our eyes no longer complicit.

  Oh! the separation, the death

  In our intertwined eyes

  The slow divorce of bodies

  On this lovely summer afternoon.

  The little washed objects

  Express a state of non-being.

  In the kitchen, my heart crushed,

  I wait for you to want to reappear.

  Partner crouching in the bed,

  Worst half of myself,

  We spend bad nights;

  You scare me. Yet, I love you.

  On a Saturday afternoon,

  Alone in the boulevard’s noise.

  I speak to myself. What do I say?

  Life is rare, life is rare.

  This evening, while walking in Venice,

  I thought again of you, my Lise;

  I would have liked to marry you

  In the gilded basilica.

  People go away, people leave one another

  They want to live a little too quickly

  I feel old, my body is heavy

  There is nothing left but love.

  Tres Calle de Sant’Engracia,

  Back home to emptiness

  I will give my avid body

  To she whom love reprieved.

  At the time of the first acacias

  A cold, almost livid, sun

  Shone weakly on Madrid

  When my life fell apart.

  A COLD SENSATION

  The morning was clear and utterly beautiful;

  You wanted to keep your independence.

  I waited for you while watching the birds:

  Whatever I did, someone would suffer.

  Why can we never

  Never

  Be loved?

  DIFFERENTIATION IN THE RUE D’AVRON

  The debris of your life is laid out on the table:

  A half-empty box of tissues,

  A bit of despair and a spare set of keys;

  I remember you were very desirable.

  Sunday spread its slightly sticky veil

  On the chip shops and the dive bars;

  For a few minutes we walked, almost buoyant,

  Then wen
t home to avoid other people

  And to look at each other for hours on end;

  You undressed your body in front of the sink,

  Your face had wrinkles but your body stayed beautiful,

  You said to me: ‘Look at me. I am whole,

  My arms are attached to my torso, and death

  Will not take my eyes like my brother’s,

  You made me discover the meaning of prayer,

  Look at me. Look. Lay your eyes on my body.’

  To live without a fulcrum, surrounded by the void

  To live without a fulcrum, surrounded by the void,

  Like a bird of prey on a white mesa;

  But the bird has wings, its prey and its revenge;

  I have none of that. The horizon remains fluid.

  I have known those nights which returned me to the world,

  Where I woke up full of new life;

  My arteries throbbed, I felt the seconds

  Chime out powerfully, so soft and so real;

  That’s over. Now, I prefer the evening,

  Every morning I feel the weariness rise,

  I enter the region of great solitudes,

  I desire nothing more than peace without victory.

  To live without a fulcrum, surrounded by the void,

  Night descends on me like a blanket

  My desire dissolves in this dark contact;

  I pass through the night, watchful and lucid.

  The light gleamed on the waters

  Like in the first days of the world,

  Our existence is a burden:

  To think the Earth is round!

  On the beach there was an entire family,

  Around a barbecue they spoke of their meat,

  Laughed moderately and opened a few beers;

  To reach the beach, I had followed the moor.

  Evening descends on the kelp,

  The sea murmurs like an animal;

  Our heart is far too dry,

  We have lost all taste for evil.

  I believe these people know each other,

  For modulated sounds emanate from their group.

  I would like to feel part of their species;

  Increased interference, then contact is lost.

  Gentle rolling of the hills;

  Far away, a tractor’s purr.

  A fire has been lit in the ruins;

  Perhaps life is an error.

  More and more badly I survive

  Amidst these organisms

  Who laugh and wear sandals,

  They are small mechanisms.

  How life is organised

  In these provincial families!

  A reduced existence,

  Shrivelled and slender joys.

  A well-cleaned kitchen;

  Ah! This obsession with kitchens!

  Hollow, decayed discourse;

  The opinions of the woman next door.

  On the direct train to Dourdan

  A girl does a crossword

  I can’t stop her,

  It helps pass the time.

  Like blocks in outer space

  Workers move rapidly

  Like independent blocks,

  They pierce the air without a trace

  Then the train slips between the rails,

  Goes past the first suburbs

  There’s no longer time nor space;

  The workers quit their work.

  In the almost empty metro

  Filled with semi-gaseous people

  I entertain myself with stupid,

  But potentially dangerous games.

  Struck by the sudden intuition

  Of freedom without repercussions

  I pass through serene stations

  Without thinking of connections.

  I wake up at Montparnasse

  By a naturist sauna,

  All returns to its rightful place;

  I feel bizarrely sad.

  The breathing of washers

  And carnivorous wing bolts

  In the night a faint flutter,

  The room is covered with steel.

  I remember the abrupt gestures

  Of that limp and furtive twin

  Sliding from failure to failure

  Stretching out his fearful body.

  The breathing of termites

  Happens without effort

  A tension rises from the cock,

  Weakens upon the body.

  When digestion

  Fills the field of consciousness

  Another, passive, life settles

  In gentleness and decency.

  My body belongs

  To a two metre mattress

  And I laugh more and more loudly;

  There are different parameters.

  Joy, at one moment, took place,

  There was a moment of respite

  When I was in the body of God;

  But, since then, the years have been brief.

  The lamp explodes in slow motion

  In the twilight of bodies,

  I see its blackened filament:

  Where is life? Where is death?

  Television aerials

  Like receptive insects

  Cling to the captives’ skin;

  The captives return home.

  If I felt like being happy

  I would learn ballroom dancing

  Or buy a football,

  Like those marvellous autistics

  Who survive till sixty

  Surrounded by plastic toys

  They feel genuine joys,

  They no longer feel time pass.

  Television romanticism,

  Sex charity and social life

  Total reality effect

  And triumph over confusion.

  The exercise of reflection,

  The habit of compassion

  The rancid flavour of hate

  And verbena infusions.

  In the Arcadia residence,

  Useless chairs and life

  That breaks between the pillars

  Like a river of drowned bodies.

  The flesh of the dead is swollen,

  Pale beneath the vitrified sky

  The river passes through the city

  Dead eyes, hostile eyes.

  Mist surrounded the mountain

  And I was next to the radiator,

  Rain fell in the mildness

  (I feel nausea coming on).

  The storm lit up, invisible,

  A setting for an external world

  Where hunger and fear reigned,

  I would have liked to be impassive.

  Beggars slid down the road

  Like famished insects

  With badly closed jaws,

  Beggars covered the road.

  Daylight slowly diminished

  Into a nightmare’s blue-grey;

  There would never be respite again;

  Slowly, daylight went away.

  I floated above the river

  Near the Italian carnivores

  In the morning the grass was new,

  I headed towards goodness.

  The blood of small mammals

  Is necessary for balance,

  Their bones and their viscera

  Are the conditions for free life.

  They can be found under the grass,

  You need only scratch the skin

  The vegetation is superb,

  It has the power of the grave.

  I was floating among the clouds,

  In absolute despair

  Between the sky and carnage,

  Between the abject and ethereal.

  A moment of pure innocence,

  The absurdity of kangaroos

  This evening I’ve had no luck,

  I am surrounded by gurus.

  They’d like to sell me their death

  Like an out-of-date sedative

  They have a vision of the body,

  Their body is often hunched
.

  The vegetal is depressing

  Endlessly proliferating

  In the meadow, the glow-worm

  Shines for one night, then dies.

  The multiple meanings of life

  We imagine to calm down

  Stir a little, then it’s over;

  The duck has webbed feet.

  The bodies piled up on the sand,

  In the inexorable light,

  Gradually change into matter;

  Sun splits the stones.

  The waves slowly quiver

  In the inevitable sun

  Cormorants fill the sky

  With lamentable cries.

  The days of life are exactly like

  Flat lemonades

  Days of life in the sun,

  Days of life in high summer.

  Skin is a borderline object,

  It is almost not an object

  In the night corpses live,

  In the body lives a regret.

  The heart spreads a beat

  Right inside the face

  There is blood beneath our nails,

  In our bodies movement starts;

  Blood overloaded with toxins

  Circulates in the capillaries

  It transports the divine substance,

  Blood stops and all is clear.

  A moment of absolute consciousness

  Passes through the aching body.

  Moment of joy, of pure presence:

  The world appears to our eyes.

  It is time to pause

  Before covering the lamp.

  In the garden, agony crawls;

  Death is blue in the rosy night.

  The itinerary was defined

  For the coming three weeks;

  First my body was to rot,

  Then crash into the infinite.

  The infinite is inside,

  I imagine the molecules

  And their ridiculous movements

  Within the grateful corpse.

  READ THE BELGIAN PRESS!

  The dead are dressed in blue

  And the Blues dressed in death