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Preface
I did not write this book. It was dictated to me month after month by a sovereign voice, and I only recorded, like one dumb, the durable echo that banged so hard on the obscure eardrum of the world. Speech was granted to me in addition, so that I might relay a few of those amazing vibrations, a few of those mysterious exchanges we sometimes intercept in the halls of distress.
The poet lives inside a prison made of streets, people, buildings, car horns, breaking dishes, open bellies, tears, rains, laughs, drunken trains. He delivers us.
I deliver you a license on the dangerous network of beauty. I only have the rights of the weakest man. I have cut in line before you at the cashier’s window.
Departing trains take us through ferocious illusions toward a stellar mountain range that weighs little in eternity’s scale.
But what good is venturing into those pathetic wings, onto that bohemian stage whose every drama we have known for a long time?
I do not conceal that these poems are coming to me from much farther away than myself and that I speak to all of you about a fleeting world, as inaccessible as a grass fire and all surrounded with evil spells.
I show you a country without possible horizon, but time and again recognizable thanks to its chief adorned with scarlet and crimson.
I impart news that concerns you directly—great news. O poetry, step away from your mirror! I speak for youths and men of all ages. I speak of what’s happening to me. I speak of a world absolved by its anger. And perhaps will you hear this voice: monochord by choice, unseated, thrown off the horse in the lane, behind this thrice-locked gate, behind this gate, behind this soul, this voice, O youths and you men of all ages, perhaps will you hear this voice knocking, wanting in, knocking, O youths, knocking just like you at the door of its destiny and singing through the crossfire.
R.G.C. |
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