"THESE JAUNDICED LOVES impression ofTristan Corbière" "on the coast of Armor, an old monastery where the winds imagined themselves in a windmill and the local donkeys came to break their molars on a wall so full of holes you´d never be able to find the entrance" "alone, but still lofty and upright chipped like the teeth of an old woman the roof shot off with force stood the tower standing pointlessly still proud of its legendary past serving only as a smugglers´ den for nightly drifters, secret lovers" "stray dogs, old rats, frauds and custom officials now the host of the little tower is a reclusive poet, with shot in his wing" "Ianded there among old owls observing him from up high he didn´t bother them in their holes he, the only paying owl, with a rental agreement of 25 écus a year, including the hanging of a door" "he was just a loafer, withered and pale an amateur hermit, hunted by the wind he had spent too long in unhealthy countries condemned by bailiffs and doctors he´s drunkenly found his niche there to die alone or live by default" "feigning to be some sort of artist, some sort of philosopher grumbling at the sun and the prices in isolation from the people he still owned a hammock, a viol a dog that answered to the name of Faithful" "just as faithful and soft and sad as himself was his other companion named Boredom dying in his sleep he was absorbed by the dream his dream was the tide washing over the beach and the tide withdrawing sometimes he sat down aimlessly in order to wait" "wait for what?" "for the tide to rise?" "for low tide?" "or for the Absent One?" "who knows?" "does he even know himself?" "did he in his windy house forget how fast the dead go?" "he, who after an entire life returns in a daze is he looking for his old sorrows here?" "certainly, She is not far away, the one you yearn for deer of St. Huberts, with a brow without flames don´t pretend you´re broken-hearted feign death if you can as She has mourned for you" "He can do that, he is a poet, right?" "immortal like all poets, and in his poor, confused head he could still feel the verses ghosting about as he totally didn´t know how to live he survived and as he didn´t know how to die" "he wrote" "it´s a being that for a hundred moons, my Beloved has whiled in your poetical soul" "I rhyme, therefore I exist don´t worry, rhyming isn´t necessary an oyster shell, broken off the shoal to you I read my farewell to life to you that mourned for me till I reached the point I stayed with you" "now it is over I am back, as a used-up shade" "I almost said ´as a man of flesh and blood´ one thing is certain:" "it is me I exist, be it just as a deletion" "I would sell my skin to Satan if he were to tempt me with a spirit" "You, I see you everywhere but as a deathly pale seer" "I worship you how sad:" "worshipping someone you love appear with a dagger in your heart you know, just like in lnès de la Sierra" "I hear knocking someone´s there but unfortunately it´s a rat" "I daydream, and always about You everywhere the memory ofYou surfaces, as a tormentor my loneliness:" "You my golden-eyed owls:" "You my wild weathercock:" "You" "What else?" "if I open the shutters in the storm I hear Your voice, Your song in lashing gusts of wind resounds Your name it is foolish, it is foolish but I hear You my heart, wide open like my shutters" "beats like crazy on the most bizarre breathing excursion" "look, a shadow of your profile is briefly visible on the bare wall but I´ve turned away hope or memory" "´sister Anna, do you see anyone coming?" "´ nothing" "I see, I see in my cold room my bed covered with soft silk with the sleeping dog on it poor creature and I laugh, because it hurts a little" "I will lure you with my viol and lyre my foolish heart is fooling itself come cry if my verses make you smile, come smile if they make you cry it´ll be fun we´ll pretend to be pitiful" "uncomplicated happiness it´s raining in my house and on the fire of my heart come my candle has gone out and I have no fire left" "his lamp went out he opened the window the sun came up he looked at his letter, smiled and tore it up in the mist the white shreds" "looked like gulls flying" "a hundred and twenty sea rovers, gallows-birds have signed up on the Mary-Gratis it´s time, fellows, we´re setting off hoist the main jib that has to bring in the money tighten the sails money makes them cuckolds" "the main jib brings in the money heigh-ho I won´t miss the gendarmes heigh-ho, no, not that one let´s set off, my brunette go on, Mary-Gratis, English brig a roguish breeze eases the sails of dawn like a true sailor" "the echo of the cabaret still resounds they answer in unison from the topsail like hummingbirds up in a coconut tree so long, my beauty, we´ll come back soon for four nights they enjoyed themselves under the bar and on top of the hostess" "try to remain faithful we´ll be good as well the Mary-Gratis stands out to sea and dissolves in the scud the high waves on open sea suddenly wake up and sluggishly nestle against the rocks travel on, everything´s been paid for" "hoist the main jib they´re already far out at sea and in their wake the swell carries their song to the beach muttering tonelessly on its way back everything´s been paid for, my beauty and we won´t return"