Well now, it's another--
I mean it's another book.
Because in fact, when you make an anthology,
and after a reading-- you destroy book.
That's the problem with the poetry reading.
Because it was extracted out, I must say a few thing
about this one.
This poem is entitled "Prose."
"Prose."
It was written in a plane from Chile.
Chile, mhm.
So if I had to comment about it, to help the listener,
because the poem is always, I mean,
difficult to understand, in fact.
So a few words about the circumstances.
It was written-- so it's sort of--
[INAUDIBLE] coming back from Ilium, from Troy,
after the war, a sort of Odyssey.
[INAUDIBLE] of us in reduced way.
Maybe all the poems are either Iliad or Odyssey.
This one is rather Odyssey.
So, entitled "Prose."
Tu me manques, mais maintenant pas plus
que ceux que je ne connais pas.
Je les invente, criblant de tes faces la terre
qui fut riche en mondes.
Quand chaque roi guidait une île à l'estime de ses biens, cendre
d'oiseau, manganèse et salamandre,
et que des naufragés fédéraient les bords.
Maintenant, tu me manques, mais comme ceux que je ne connais pas,
dont j'imagine avec ton visage l'impatience.
J'ai jeté tes dents aux rêveries.
Je t'ai traité par-dessus l'épaule.
Il y a des vestales qui reconduisent au Pacifique.
Son eau fume.
C'est après le départ des fidèles.
L'océan bave comme un mongol aux oreillers du lit,
charogne en boule et poils
au caniveau de sel.
Un éléphant blasphème Poséidon.
Tu ne me manques pas
plus que ceux que je ne connais pas maintenant.
Orphique, tu l'es devenu.
J'ai jeté ton absence démembrée en plusieurs vals.
Tu m'as changé en hôte.
Je sais ou j'invente.
I miss you.
But now, no more than those whom I do not know.
I invent them, riddling with your faces.
The earth once rich in worlds, when each King guided
an island by dead reckoning.
Its wealth-- bird, ash, manganese, and salamander,
and castaways federated the shores.
Now I miss you, but like those whom I do not know,
whose impatience I imagine with your face,
I have flung your teeth to reveries.
I have dealt with you over my shoulder.
There are vestals who escort back to the Pacific
its water steams.
The faithful have already departed.
The ocean drools like a Mongol to his bed pillows.
Balled up carrion and skins in the salt trough,
an elephant blasphemes Poseidon.
I do not miss you more than those whom I do not know now.
Orphic you have become.
I have flung your dismembered absence into several veils.
You have turned me into a guest I know, or I invent.
[SPEAKING FRENCH]