from The Nothing Bird

Pierre Peuchmaurd

Glimmers

The glimmers of our world: the river crow spreading its wide blue wings in the drowning shade.

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On a yellow stone, a white mane—a glimmer of wind.

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Glimmers of fire in the mirror: the auburn one returning, all body and tides.

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Glimmers of fear: like a necklace dangling between your breasts, snapped by the night's shrill cry.

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Glimmers of dawn, a barbed dance. Glimmer of the trees—we must leave.

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This is no white creature, this is a hole in the sky.

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The glimmers of the wolf, glowing she-wolves—a dogwood barks in their joint song.

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Rock or heather. The glimmers of the roosters. Desire ruffles the crests, the countryside and its moons.

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The glimmers of vines: wrestlers bound by their lion spirit, their spears and their indigo blue.

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It's a king, it's a chair, it's a lighthouse standing in the clay.

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The glimmers of lakes, of iron, of girls. Glimmers of fog and of bare land.

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The glimmer of feathers, of little dresses, and of remorse. Glimmers of blood in the garden.

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It's a shoulder.

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The glimmers of arrows. The glimmers of otters inside their prey.

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And rust in the hands left open. The glimmers of the wounds along the knife.

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The sand glimmers like nothing, like nothing glimmers, like sky and lead on the patio. The sand runs, it does not glimmer.





The Foam of Lions

It's raining, we count the hearts of the palm tree. Elsewhere, a wall burns against a white sky, blue lions sigh after blue prey. But lions, you say, don't sigh. I watch their prey, I sigh. The desert's door has closed behind us.

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Their tails whip the sand. In the air, a mane floats within reach of your lips. Three yellow-eyed lionesses have arched their spine well, but against the wind brushing the earth, not the large absent limb you bite in your dream. A white rafter holds the night.

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Obscure lions in hallways, but where do they go? Light, the lions under the waterfalls, pounded white, their bones, their flesh tossed to the world, the foam of lions. They're startled by the persistence of their thirst, by the gazelle that laughs in her sleep, by the girl from the sky with lead fangs.

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Copper lions, bracelets of bone, and the nabules tintinabulating at nightfall. The black hunter strings his harp into the morning. The sky is high, the bird from the water flies like a lion. Cargos of roses, trains of dust, the harp is stringed and the lion no longer has a shadow. Trains of dust, copper blood.

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At noon, the lions are a speck of sand. At noon, the lions are smoke rings, rafts of light, hedges of lace, mirages of salt and emerald. At noon, the lions have closed their eyes to the expectation of night that will see them standing tall and tamed and licking your stomach—the night of blood curdled on your rumps, on your ruins.

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But in the dream of the lionesses, one or one thousand is all the same. Everything roars, everything falls silent; the dawn does not lift a breath. What was that zebra called again?        


translated from the French by E.C. Belli