Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

To Each Unfolding Leaf

promise.

The cold penetrates the beloved earth (the hazelnut switches, the rotting cabbages, the piles of pruned branches, and farther on, off to the side, the linden trees). These burning eyelids for how many more days? And then night, in the half-opened haze, at the window, the star that was favorable. There it is, present and curved. And you’d like to reach it or incessantly curse it before the white-knucklebone dawn is born. Theformerbluegazeshroudedintearsandyellowish— mirroring a Christ trinket. . . A lash amid the morning stupor. To your face, this pain. . . The bygone body like a generous story. The memory slowly returns. Stealthy steps coming across the slowworm of the ruins, the garden’s eye: its cast-off clothing (dead skin bitten into, gnawed at by little black ants). And the child’s stick, nearby. The sacrifice table was merely a place covered by white dead-nettles. Already innocence is taming you. Staggering, near other companions whom the fire is staring down. . . you’re murmuring, they say. . . (the roughnecks, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, even in their craze for spurs, their rage, have merely sandy eyes)

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