I had wandered a long while, in the fading hours of the afternoon, through the cool streets in the neighborhood of cemeteries and riots near the mixed-style cathedral. A pronounced nonchalance, like that of ringed fingers drumming discreetly on a jewelry box in the penumbra of antiquarians’ elegant Merovingian salons, made my step heavy with each turn in the blind spiral of buildings. The transparent prison of air spread the sound of gongs. The only respite given me now and then came from worm-eaten benches that evoked the funereal stations of the cross blazoned with Roman emblems and phalerae, as complex as the metro’s canvas. This labyrinth seemed to serve as pedestal for some shadowy Calvary, some outlying Babel. Doors swung mysteriously here and there, though always beyond a bend in the road, and the dismal pursuit of that sordid opening to the outskirts excited an itching desire within me. Those calls deep as horns, that anxious pursuit through heaps of rubble, ladder scaffoldings, rows of blind shops barren as the Hoggar Mountains, suddenly brought me, behind the screens of a fine rain, before the apse of the most ambiguous building I’ve ever seen—then slid me the password that neutralized the sentry at the postern, and under the wide beams of light, smooth and sea-green from the stained glass windows, with tears in my eyes, I felt the lower half of my body melt in the vigorous, tufted grass of an oceanic meadow.
Translated from the French by Alice Yang
"The poet is of no party." BaudelaireOur manifesto is an act of substantiation.
We reject all forms of futilitarianism, in whatever disguise.
We believe that comedy is the song of the village and tragedy the song of the goat.
We believe what is written in the books, but now we want to see for ourselves.
The single idea, beating on the same doors in vain.
The analogue and the invention.
The death cell.
The first permission.
Though we watch the stage for things to happen, though our minds wander.
By ourselves in the green field, playing our diversion.
Though the story begins with the loss of a home.
Out of the machine, we shift restlessly in our seats.