The Ten Poems Of Solitude III Poem by Hugues C. Pernath

In my strange sorrow I suspect petrifaction
Of many lives, sometimes the foulness of the source
The lily or the shady foliage.
Sometimes I suspect the trembling of your hands
That will never repeat themselves in the running line
Of the infectious ordeal.
Because I realise how, sleepless, I maim myself
Into a useless tool, while my tissues die off
In the clammy cold fear of every new night.

And I move toward my image, nameless
More fearful than before, and exchange my gallows for
For the rattling rains of ritual
That will slaughter descendants and livestock, purge
On the old way to the newly-built city.
Till all is lost and founders ignominiously
In a darkness where no sun ever germinates seeds.

As if true. As if lies.
Speaking: one languages, the same word of disquiet
In the surf raised above all bonds.
I feel the absence as a difficult revelation.
As shards of relics, of worlds, untrue
And outside time. Thus I became a witness
Against the one who interpreted my tenderness.
No sleep will ever unite us, no waking
Free us. For my shadow will be a shadow.

Translation Paul Vincent