After grasping the games and their rules
The fatigue of participation becomes less and less bearable.
Straight after grasping the knowledge of gain
One must leave the game;
This is not the story of losing
But of not winning

Because:
The city is a woman so forlorn she can’t say “no,”
Who makes love because she doesn’t want to speak;
The city is a badly beaten dog
That no longer responds to pain;
The tonic words that touch the hearts of urbanites
Can’t handle
The aches that get buried deeper as the city dwellers sleep,
And for this reason
Every conversation in the city is a little bit in vain.                                                         

                                              *

                 Every ache sleeps in a certain position. In sleep, the 
                 body that becomes itself as it forgets itself will 
                 discover that position through trial and error.
                 
                 The body knows how to soothe its own ache. The body
                 can construct soporific angles, hills for its aches. Every
                 hill conceals an ache. This is why thousands of aches
                 will settle in the hills of our flesh, of our insides, where
                 they have found their sleeping positions. This is why it 
                 is dangerous to budge people, to demolish their hills.

                 To tug at cities and at urbanites is to awaken the aches
                 that sleep on the hills.

                                              *                                                          

-S live in every house; people
build hills to put their aches to sleep.
-S and -es, the adjacent suffixes,
Will begin new days for new aches

People who cause people to ache
Will collide again tomorrow without ointment
Then they’ll return and make other people
Lick their aching spots;
-S and -es
Shall live by licking and biting,
By making people lick and bite…s

Whereas saliva wounds the flesh:
If you press your soft mouth for very long to a body,
If you briefly glide your sharp mouth across a body,
In both cases…

Whereas saliva heals the flesh’s wounds
If you press your soft mouth for very long to a body,
If you briefly glide your sharp mouth across a body,
In both cases…

                                              *         

Wounds will open in your flesh
Then the wounds will forget themselves in your flesh
There is no third way in this city
And in the other city…And in the other one…

Don’t wake sleeping aches!
Neither the city’s, nor the city dwellers’

Keep your saliva inside your cheeks,
Don’t kiss those who don’t have the strength to say “no”
Don’t gather on the city’s hills
Like the pushy crowds
Don’t stamp around the hills and wake the city’s aches
Don’t stand on the seven aches’ seven hills,
This work is not for you
Because:
If you bite, your mouth will hurt
If you lick, you’ll get poisoned
In any case, it is you who will fall in this city

                                              *         

                 But still, a person can only be alone in a city with a sea. 
                 Because you can turn your face to the sea. That way, 
                 you turn your back to the crowds. As for cities without 
                 a sea, whichever way you turn there are people, 
                 whichever way you turn.

                 For that reason, people should get along well with each 
                 other in cities without a sea. As for cities with a sea, 
                 those who want to can also live without running into  
                 people’s faces.

                                              *       

Go down. Go down to the sea
For if you turn your face to the sea
You’ll turn your back on the shameless crowd
Only in a city with a sea can you be by yourself
By the sea

                                                                      

People are all the same. They gradually turn into mirrors.
Only the opposite of your face,
Its reverse can be reflected in their waters.
Let go, don’t look at those mirrors,
Let your retinas register a thousand disparate waves 
Your nape to the sun, your forehead to the wind

Look, look carefully, may your eyes brim with sea
In any case you’ll certainly
Encounter, even in this city,
A person who’ll say, “Some sea got in your eye,” to someone,
“A bird got stuck in your hair,” to someone else

Who’ll lean their ear against your mind,
Who’ll look not at your face, but wherever you’re looking
Who, when you say, “They’re crowding the sea, the water hurts,”
Won’t be surprised and stare at your mouth, but at the sea

In this city of seven aches
This person will touch your aches without waking them
Lull your pain without opening it up

Go down. Go down to the sea