I have no strength when I see this woman
The way her finger brushes her lips,
The way she lowers it among the pages
Scattering their words within the grass
Like a swan its wings in the red and soft sun.

Don’t rush talking to her in birds’ tongue, I order myself
Nor sing to her a child’s prayer from the chestnut leave
Thus, in a gallop, over sheets of paper, the knight stretches his arm rigidly,
A snare to the innocent sparrow
With a frail finger she oppresses the lips of this poem,
And they are enjoying the whipping of the purple hair
Which she threw, like the fisherman his trawl, ahead of the gallop.

I have no strength since she raised her eyes,
And their spear was released through my ribs
Towards the thicket of the lake,
Where the mud swallows the lines of a patched up boat.
(on the shore, the fish are throwing themselves, burned by this light and there they lay)
oh happy ones, for you found your pursuit in her path!
Alas myself, for there’s no strength in me to eat and to drink
When I see this woman and words are falling out of my mouth
Like some crumbs for the stray dogs
Like some flowers thrown on the water