At sunrise I arose…
by Michel Deguy

At sunrise I arose
To the sound the machine animals make
passing by in the streets over heads
Was it briefly interminable or
interminably brief or both
It was the face ever undone by the mouth
that sentences me to the blinking
of the apparition that slips away in itself,
to erasure, on the edge of the world
It was five o'clock it is six o'clock my love says
One more hour went by an hour has passed
Where the e is not the voice inserts it
and wherever mute phonemes may be they muzzle
My error is ancient my love
To the stalactites of the ages was added
one more micron between your shore and mine
The error of one who hides in a corpse
pulling on the death mask but
Often I understand what people say to me