|
I know despair in its broad outlines. Despair doesn't have wings, it isn’t necessarily found at a cleared table on a terrace, in the evening, by the seashore. It’s despair and not the return of a quantity of minor facts like seeds that desert one furrow for another at nightfall. It’s not the moss on a stone and it’s not the drinking glass. It’s a boat pelted by snow, if you will, like birds that are falling and their blood lacks the least thickness. I know despair in its broad outlines. A very small shape delineated by jewels of hair. It’s despair. A pearl necklace for which no one can find the clasp and whose existence doesn’t hang by even a thread, that’s despair. We don’t speak about the rest. We haven’t finished despairing if we begin. Myself I despair of the lampshade about four o’clock, I despair of the fan about midnight, I despair of the condemned man’s last cigarette. I know despair in its broad outlines. Despair has no heart, the hand always stays out-of-breath in despair, in despair whose death mirrors can never tell us. I live off this despair that charms me. I love this bluefly that flies through the sky at the hour when stars are singing. I know in its broad outlines despair with its long slender fissures, the despair of pride, the despair of anger. I get up each day like everybody and I stretch my arms against flowered wallpaper, I don’t remember anything and it’s always with despair that I discover night’s beautiful uprooted trees. The air in the bedroom is fair as drumsticks. The weather’s time. I know despair in its broad outlines. It’s like the wind in the curtains that gives me a helping hand. Can anyone imagine such despair! Fire! Ah they are still going to come... Help! Those here that are falling down stairs... And the newspaper advertisements, and the electric signs along the canal. Get going, sandpile, you old sandpile! In its broad outlines, despair has no importance. It is menial labor of trees that are going to make a forest yet, menial labor of stars that are going to make one fewer day yet, it is menial labor of fewer days that are yet going to make my life. |
|
