The lion and the lambs

"Don't ask me who's influenced me. A lion is made up of the lambs he's digested, and I've been reading all my life."

Giorgos Seferis, writer, diplomat, Nobel laureate (1900 - 1971)

Fragment #98

Serenity in impending doom

quietude in the hurricane

light in the darkest gloom

hope in the harshest bane –

thus are the dragons

that in here loom.

N'oubliez pas

S'il-vous-plaît, n'oubliez pas de:

• le matin, ouvrir les persiennes
• changer de mes draps la parure
• poursuivre la lecture des Persanes
• vous occuper de ma manucure
• arranger mes oreillers
• me parler gentiment
• ne pas me réveiller
• cajoler mes sentiments
• changer l'eau des fleurs
• faire comme si de rien n'était
• penser à mon bonheur
• me faire profiter de l'été
• penser à mes richesses
• oublier mes défauts
• tenir mes promesses
• accueillir les nouveaux
• me tenir la main lors des injections
• masser mes jambes inactives
• faire de ma sieste une sédation
• me ramener au bord quand je dérive
• me dire qui est venu me voir
• m'assurer que j'aurai des visites
• au besoin rafraîchir ma mémoire
• au besoin les faire venir vite
• mettre de la musique en fond
• ignorer mes silences
• tourner mon regard au plafond
• vous armer de patience
• parler comme si je n'étais pas là
• faire comme si je n'existais plus
• faire comme si j'étais juste las
• parler comme si vous y aviez cru
• ne pas oublier de prendre les devants
• au besoin, ouvrir mes paupières
• vous assurer que je suis vivant
• le soir, éteindre la lumière.

Nombre de jours à vivre : 18

Nemigen

La vieille cité se traîne, hagarde et cruelle,

Dans les nappes de brumes qui émanent du fleuve.

Elle se souvient avoir dû faire un choix,

Il y a longtemps, alors neuve et belle,

Mais seules les conséquences et leur poids,

Quasi-posthumes, secouent ses articulations trop sollicitées

Comme une vile arthrose.

Elle était moins amère, avant,

Quand ses marbres étaient roses,

Même quand elle était au levant,

Même quand elle sentait le rance.

Il y a dans son air aujourd'hui

Des pestilences qui bouchent ses narines,

Une amertume qu'elle subit démunie,

Mais avec laquelle chacun se sent uni

Dans sa déshérence chagrine.

Soudain, d'une seule voix, elle se secoue,

Branle ses quais et ses dômes,

Exhume d'un coup quelques vieux fantômes,

Et comme une lionne harponnant au cou

Une vieille proie qu'on avait pensé morte,

Elle rugit d'une voix rauque et forte,

Un lambeau de chair en gueule,

Qu'elle vivante ne veut entendre plus

Ce mot entre tous si veule

Ce mot qui interdit tout salut.

La bouche en sang et secouée de sanglots,

La cité assassine se love de nouveau

Pour digérer sa pitance en ses sombres flots

Fière d'avoir retourné le mort en son caveau,

Une ultime fois, comme un pied-de-nez au sort,

Se vautrant un peu plus dans son malheur,

Un peu plus dans le souvenir d'alors,

Dans le ressouvenir de ses plus belles heures.

The Sea Peoples

No other graver matter

than a piffling presence

or a downright absence

of dialogue

than a definite pick

between null and void –

unfair to say the very least

on that damned old sea

yet even then there is our

leaning propensity

to steer downwind

right under the weather

where muted voices are heard

muttering of softened catastrophes

when we bailed out a leaking ship

with a punctured thimble

Attention! Attention! is cried

quite forgetting

the mere presence or absence

of ropes and pulleys

midst the roaring of the waves

we add insult to injury

tend to our wounds with handfuls of salt

furl the sails! is heard

unfurl the sails! is heard again

we don't know which order is right

or if we heard 'light' or 'fight' or 'night'

we sail on a sea of silence

we sail away

we sail a way

the wind howls and the sails,

half-unfurled in the confusion,

are off the barking gales

land ahoy! mirage ahoy!

daydreams pervade the wake

we ought not to drowse

there are skerries to be avoided

we ought not to

but our wakefulness is scuttled

by reveries in broad daylight

flooded by eerie sunbeams

– calenture on the prowl –

we have hearts of men nonetheless

stout hearts of men honed in deserts

sharpened on seas

bled by mad wenches

filled with bad rum and snuff

and now with rheumatisms

and prone to snuffling

ether does that to us

and under ether the least shard of light

appears as a dagger in the underbelly of the clouds

under ether the least drop of water

appears as a sky-engulfing sea

the least whisper a world-crushing typhoon.

Eager to make a name to ourselves

like the peoples of the sea back then

we had no other possibility

but to take to the ocean

and choose between the silence and the fury.

Magnitude of disorder

"I believe that life can go on forever. It takes a million years to evolve a new species, ten million for a new genus, one hundred million for a class, a billion for a phylum -- and that's usually as far as your imagination goes. In a billion years, it seems, intelligent life might be as different from humans as humans are from insects. But what would happen in another ten billion years? It's utterly impossible to conceive of ourselves changing as drastically as that, over and over again. All you can say is, on that kind of time scale the material form that life would take is completely open. To change from a human being to a cloud may seem a big order, but it's the kind of change you'd expect over billions of years."

Freeman Dyson, physicist (b. 1923)

Fragment #13

Drip-dripping under the elm trees

after the storm

lashed words scattered

amid the branches

tip-toeing deer

amidst the wreakage

what can be salvaged

and the silence

the silence after the fury

its echo wreaking havoc

the forest not unscathed

to be healed someday

to be whole again

yet different

such was the force of the storm

such is the rage of the silence

which will last

subdued, hidden

behind what the content traveller

expects to hear.

Fragment #12

Last night, I went down in history

as the first man to go down in history for

nothing more than going down in history

just as history had just stopped.

Brought back to Life

Today, my class had a test.

A simple test. On everything they'd learnt

this past year.

They prepared for this for two weeks.

Most, if not all, were ready.

And as I was looking at them,

going about the rows,

Amid the scratching and the sighing,

I knew that at one point

Life would happen to them.

I knew that at some stages

they would be as drunk as a skunk,

they'd be harassed,

laughing till they'd hurt,

they'd fall in love and have their heart broken,

they'd yell at someone, for next to no reason,

they'd have kids, be happy, separate,

divorce, cry and pray for themselves,

or for someone they love,

or for someone who's gone,

or about to.

I knew they'd all know their bit of shamefulness,

their awkward moments,

their flashes of treachery, of deceit,

of contrition, absolution, desperation.

I knew that most of them would never be ready for this,

but on the other hand no one is ever ready for life.

Life just happens,

quicker than lightning,

bitterer than the bitterest lemon,

sweeter than the sweetest kiss,

yet Life is that most precious thing

which ever happens to us along the way.

I also knew that they'd come to love and hate it,

to protest against its manifold proofs of injustice,

to groan under the buffets,

but in the end I knew they'd realise that,

as I was going about the rows,

as they were answering questions

for an ultimately stupid test,

years from now,

they'd smile and remember this bit of their lives

as one of those engaging moments when

all things are vested with a different shade of life

with so many layers of meanings and interpretations

that

after the soberness, the drunkenness, the elation,

the disappointments, the breaking and the healing,

the mess and the bringing back to the surface

Life would essentially be the same

for each and every one of us,

though time changes and levels,

come what may,

perspectives be grim or endearing,

life would be, all things weighed,

all paths considered,

such a mighty gift that

it'd be sheer madness to spoil such an opportunity.

Pated writer

"Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like paté."

Margaret Atwood, novelist and poet (b. 1939)