Eduard Escoffet

there is the woman that listens to you and there is the other.

there is the woman that, with the night, dulls the moon and you find her, and there is the other.

there is the woman that you see

and the other. and the one you would like to see… and the other.

there is the woman, you seem to remember, that made you lose

sight of the world and there is the other. then too

there is the woman that makes you forget her and the other, she does too.

there is the woman and the wind, at leisure, that are speech

and are words and a dream that walks. and flies. and the other.

there is the woman that you would like to know and the other.

there is the other and the woman you do not remember.

there is the woman and the other that you would like

to forget. there is the woman without eyes, that are

the barrels of wine in the dark of a sailboat that

has done with the sea and has told you that mermaids

she has not seen. the other neither. and there is the woman

that will cry that she has not touched the fire,

that has her eyes covered and there is the other,

whose eyes you have covered, and you too have

your eyes pulled from their sockets between the mirror

and the light of the sun.

there is the woman that mutters

and there is the other. there is the woman that hangs out the washing

or arranges the fragility of the world and there is the other.

there is the woman, made flesh, that is in the light and is in the dark

and there is the other, in the dark and in the light.

there is the woman and the sex. the sex, too. and the other.

English translations by graham thomson

they have closed all the schools. no more learning to read. no more learning to write. we have closed all the words. now that bodies no longer last as long as they should –like the night and the blind fire of the lovers– better to put words aside. now the mothers no longer bother about the kids and the school and the hours. now, the mothers, far from the warmth of the fathers, only care about the uniforms. and the children do odd jobs or deform their bodies. they have stained all the dresses. even so: they no longer know how to write how to read they no longer know. and the night, feeble and brief, takes in two bodies that deform each other. like words, but without words.

translated by graham thomson

a text is the body. a book –that is to say: the reality that we see– is another body. with texts that are extinguished, others bordering embrace seas that are in themselves a body.

each man is a frontier

each man is a shadow

each man is a door

each man is a failure

each man is a counter

each man is an outburst

each man is a rumour

each man is a wall

each man is a writing

each man is a silence

each man is shadow

each man is outburst

each man is din

each man is wall

each man is writing

each man is silence

a text is the body. a book –that is to say: the reality that we see– is another body

and i tell you that the dead kill the living. and that the subtle movement of the word, perhaps wild, perhaps that of chatting, is also a cadaver. they will tell the children, the crazy sages and the heads of department –everything brand new– and over your eyelids you will always contemplate the imprint of the gesture. your gesture has confused me: you will see on the altarpiece the painting with images with your heart to be swept and, who knows, it will never leave your body. meanwhile i find everything difficult to understand and it chokes me to think of it. on the wet grass, lying, on the trodden earth. inert, stretched out, deserted.

english translations by graham thomson

fear of mother

fear of father’s pipe

fear of uncle

fear of uncle’s marriage

fear of the girl cousin that looks with breasts grown

fear of being a mother

fear of being the girl cousin whom the cousin sticks his dick in

fear of being the cousin that has to stick his dick in the girl cousin

fear of being a loyal father

fear of being a progenitor and loving to extremes the sweet sweet baby

fear of being an obliging mother

that feeds a stranger:

that feeds a terrorist,

that feeds a member of a sect,

that feeds a junkie,

that feeds a small-time dealer,

that feeds an artist loaded with acid,

that feeds a visionary,

that feeds a thief,

that feeds a cop.

fear of being a mother and not being able to handle the pistol when her son comes home with his uniform stained

fear of bread

fear of wind

fear of olives stuffed with anchovy

fear of being an olive stuffed with anchovy or worse yet: a prawn

fear of those who speak and fear of those who do not speak

fear of hating skateboarders

fear of hating ikea

fear of hating trades unionists

fear of hating the holy catholic church and each and every one of its parishioners

fear of writing the letters to father

fear of being kafka

fear of being heterosexual

fear of being homosexual

fear of not being bisexual

fear of not being multicultural

fear of not being a democrat

fear of being stalin

fear of having nothing to lose

fear

fear of not being you

fear of not being you

fear of not being you

english translations by graham thomson