My good neighbors fled away,
Professeurs et Chanteurs,
And since my days that were of constant pleasure
Were faintly feeding on memory
With so often my thoughts reeved through the
Swallow of my mind
Searching for a fading reality,
Caught with the arm of melancholy
Across a barren field of despair;
Once a forest behind our fence
Where the wood choppers hacked the wood
And the dead trunks lay down on the ground
As if they were soldiers killed
During the civil wars
In Lebanon, Nicaragua or Spain.
That picture of the forest
Is still hovering in my mind;
Of the birds banished,
Of their kingdom destroyed,
By that cruel hand of man,
Whose illusory fingers seemed
In the distance like snakes
Gliding through my body
Through every vein.
I looked up to the sky;
There was no reply;
I looked everywhere;
I saw nothing but the forest
Of scraggy teeth, the stumps that remain,
And my hopes remained
Blown by the wind,
Scraping like chaff on sand.
And ever since, I wake up,
Looking into a panorama of memories,
Growing a wood of yearning thoughts
In a lingering reverie of the past.
10/1974