No More Learning

what takes refuge

in me your future

becomes a

purity for life,

which I shall

not touch -

6.

To pray to the dead

(not for them)

- need

for the child here

- his absence

because of the true dead

only a child!

7.

Hands join

towards him not

to be touched -

but who is -

- whom a space

distances -

8.

To resurrect

- to construct

with his

lucidity - this

work - too

vast for me

and thus

depriving me

of life, sacrificing

it if it is

not for the work

- to be him grown,

deprived - and

do it without

fear of toying

with his death -

if I sacrificed

life for him -

if I accepted

this death

as my own

9.

Exemplar

we have known

through you this 'more

than ourselves'

which often escapes

us - and will be

in us - in our

actions, now

child, sowing

the ideal

10.

Father mother

vowing never

another child

- grave that he dug

life ends there

11.

Useless

remedies

abandoned

if nature

wished it not

I would

take myself

for one dead

balms mere

consolations for us

- doubt

then not, their reality!

12.

Child our

immortality

made in fact

of lost human

hopes - son -

entrusted to woman

by a man

no longer young

despairing of finding

the mystery

taking a wife

13.

Ill

since the day when death

installed itself - marked by

malady -

no longer himself already, but

the one we would wish

to see again later

beyond death -

summing up death and

corruption - appearing

so, with his sickness

and pallor

14.

Ill - to be naked

as the child -

appearing to us

- we profit from those

hours, when death

stricken

he lives

still, and

is still ours

title: poetry of

the malady

15.

With the gift of words

I could have made you

yourselfchild of the work

kingmade of you

instead

-no, sadof the son

in us

- made you- of

task

no-

yet he

remember theproves

that he

bad days -was such -

played

mouth closedthat role!

native

speech-

forgotten

it is I who have

aided you since


16.

- Have brought back in

you the child -

youth or sickness

of history learned

forgottenfrom which

nothing

I would not have

suffered - to be

in my turn

studying only that

-death

17.
Then - you would only

have been me

- since I am

here - lonely, sad -

- no, I remember

a childhood -

- yours

twin voices

but without you

I'd not have - known

18.

So it is I,

hands accursed -

who bequeathed you!

- silence

(he forgives)

19.

Oh! Leave. . . us

at this word

- that merges

us both

- unites us

finally -

since who has

spoken it

yours

20.

- All this transformation

once barbarous and

material

external -

now

moral

and within

21.

No brother sister

ever the absent one

shall not be less than

those present -

22.

to feel it burst

in the night

the immense void

produced by what

would be his life

- because he cannot

know -

he is dead

lightning?

23.

Moment when one must

break with the

living memory,

to inter it

- place it in the coffin,

hide it - with

the brutality of

placing it there,

raw contact

to see it no longer

except as idealised -

later, no longer him

living, there - but

the germ of his being

taken back into itself -

the germ allowing

thought for him

- sight of him

vision (ideality

of state) and

speech for him

for in us, pure

him, a refining

- become our

honour, the source

of our finer

feelings -

true re-entry

into the ideal

24.

Death's treacherous

blow - of

which he

evil

knew nothing

- in my turn

to toy with it, the

one thing childhood

knows nothing of

25.

hour of the

empty room

-

until it is

opened

perhaps everything

follows thus

(morally)

26.

You can, with your

weak hands, drag me

into your grave - you

have the right -

- I myself

who follow you, I, I

let myself fall -

- yet if you

wish, together,

let us both make.