Bloodsweat by Pierre Jean Jouve

The Stain

I saw a thick patch of green oil
From a machine and I thought
On the warm pavement in the wicked district
Long, long about my mother’s blood.

For white skin is an idiom of night
And what wastes have its feet not trod by day?
A shadow—which it is—is not more frightened
Nor more obscene, nor more horribly wicked.

The sinless man
Is he who should not die, therefore he
Who would not know what no means, is therefore he
Who would be like no one else, and should not live.