Projection - Jules Supervielle

Cemetery in the air
—Celestial dust—
Where friends will recognize each other
With less miserly eyes,
Cemetery in the air haunted by criss-cross streets,
By powerful avenues
And by embarcation piers for souls of all sizes,
When the wind blows down from the sky
I can hear the heavy steps
Of life and death who exchange their prisoners
At your shifting crossroads.
Should I call you phantoms,
Amalgams of darkness,
Each one searching for a body
And for the slightest pleasure?
All you whose strongest desires
Cloud the mirror of the sky
But are too weak to be reflected,
Are you waiting for the birth
Of a swan-billed moon
Or a star held in suspense
Behind a celestial sign?
Are you waiting for the dawn
And its less embarrassing light
Or for a little bit of rain
To slip into our strict homes,
Without anyone seeing them,
Your thin itinerant souls
That frighten away the living?
The living—bound to their hearts,
Cemented to their bones and flying the colors of delight,
All these people who speak so loudly from their rosy lips
And are proud of their vigilant and treacherous thoughts
And of their eyes sweeping the horizon without fatigue.

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Jules Supervielle (1884 - 1960) Uruguay
Translated by Geoffrey Gardner