Frail before the squalor
squalor being a feeble answer
the everyday self gives its own abjections
it surprises me to be in a city whose name
like the humidity that clings to its ancient walls
or like its tubercular pigeons
means nothing to me
any more than being inside its plastic image
as I sink into La Defense
or
lose myself in the ardor of its past
oh the purity the freshness of withered things
piles of feathers cover us
undressing us in your presence
and you, city I live in
are you collapsing or emerging
from my kaleidoscope?
Not far from the modern station I settle
into cramped spaces with poor ventilation
ghostly stretches where you (with limited means)
can cross the afternoon of a godforsaken summer
from a single angle only
—the wonder of afternoon—
its caress along my sex is like a specter’s
and my love for this afternoon is just like in the movies.
The ardor of the past lies in childhood
but I can’t dwell too long on this transparency
and I’ve got no desire to erect a childhood
what’s wonderful is the gnarling branch
that extends forever out of some base substance (the refuse)
and so is this lack of flowers along the gray afternoon.
Leaning in your arms:
your freshest smile rising
from the old Bastilles
my privates are inflamed with greenish fluids
like impressionist colors
walking in order to grasp the rigid autumn of the Louvre
the stone feelings of the Egyptian Venus
or the bronze gesture of a gladiator’s leg
—basements and galleries of stolen treasures—
I keep walking, I feel for the lesion of memories
my body of a girl
the rigid silence
of purity
nothing back then could penetrate my fear
the way this city can get inside my greed.
