“The whole human earth was bleeding.Time, buildings, routes, rain,erase the constellation of the crime,the fact is, this small planethas been covered a thousand times by blood,war or vengeance, ambush or battle,people fell, they were devoured,and later oblivion wiped cleaneach square meter: sometimesa vague, dishonest monument,other times a clause in bronze,and still later, conversations, births,townships, and then oblivion.What arts we have for exterminationand what science to obliterate memory!What was bloody is covered with flowers.Once more, young men, ready yourselvesfor another chance to kill, to die again,and to scatter flowers over the blood.”

“I am not jealousof what came before me.Come with a manon your shoulders,come with a hundred men in your hair,come with a thousand men between your breasts and your feet,come like a riverfull of drowned menwhich flows down to the wild sea,to the eternal surf, to Time!Bring them allto where I am waiting for you;we shall always be alone,we shall always be you and Ialone on earth,to start our life!”

“And what importance do I have in the courtroom of oblivion?”

“In what language does rain fall over tormented cities?”

“A song of despairThe memory of you emerges from the night around me.The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.In you the wars and the flights accumulated.From you the wings of the song birds rose.You swallowed everything, like distance.Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!I made the wall of shadow draw back,beyond desire and act, I walked on.Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.There was the black solitude of the islands,and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain mein the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!How terrible and brief my desire was to you!How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.Oh the mad coupling of hope and forcein which we merged and despaired.And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.And the word scarcely begun on the lips.This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!From billow to billow you still called and sang.Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,lost discoverer, in you everything sank!It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hourwhich the night fastens to all the timetables.The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.Deserted like the wharves at dawn.Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!”

“At night I dream that you and I are two plantsthat grew together, roots entwined,and that you know the earth and the rain like my mouth,since we are made of earth and rain.”

“Now we will count to twelveand we will all keep still.For once on the face of the earthlet's not speak in any language,let's stop for one second,and not move our arms so much.It would be an exotic momentwithout rush, without engines,we would all be togetherin a sudden strangeness.Fishermen in the cold seawould not harm whalesand the man gathering saltwould look at his hurt hands.Those who prepare green wars,wars with gas, wars with fire,victory with no survivors,would put on clean clothesand walk about with their brothersin the shade, doing nothing.What I want should not be confusedwith total inactivity.Life is what it is about;I want no truck with death.If we were not so single-mindedabout keeping our lives moving,and for once could do nothing,perhaps a huge silencemight interrupt this sadnessof never understanding ourselvesand of threatening ourselves with death.Perhaps the earth can teach usas when everything seems deadand later proves to be alive.Now I'll count up to twelveand you keep quiet and I will go.”