08 January 2012

Leaves and Light by Yves Bonnefoy




II.

The voice was of pure irony in the trees,
Of distance, of death,
Of the unloosening of dawns far away from us

In a forbidden place. And our harbor
Was all black clay. No ship
Had ever shown a sign of light there,
Everything began with this song of the cruel dawn,
A liberating hope, a poverty.

It was a naked moment, torn, as when
Working difficult soil
One feels the blade sink into the earth’s dark heart
And invents death under the changing sky.

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