Passer-By These Are Words - Yves Bonnefoy

 Passer-by, these are words.
 But instead of reading
 I want you to listen: to this frail
 Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.


Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee
Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names.

 It flits between two sprays of leaves,
Carrying the sound of branches that are real
 To those that filigree the still unseen.


Then know an even fainter sound, and let it be
 The endless murmuring of all our shades.

Their whisper rises from beneath the stones
 To fuse into a single heat with that blind
 Light you are as yet, who can still gaze.


 May your listening be good! Silence
Is a threshold where a twig breaks in your hand,
 Imperceptibly, as you attempt to disengage
 A name upon a stone:

And so our absent names untangle your alarms.

 And for you who move away, pensively,
 Here becomes there without ceasing to be.

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Yves Bonnefoy (Born 1923) France