We all die alone however we can,
as for me I’ll coil in a volcano’s
swooning crater
or dilute myself
in the path’s refrains
And if my heart stays
till trail’s end
I don’t see why my blood
can’t join the flood
beneath this ark, snatching
from the deluge of my human pasts,
from the face each agony showed me,
the cross or port’s beacon
we sailed from
(we sought a belly in common
to save us from the mass grave!)
Make it so blood swamps me
–better blood than brushfire!
Everywhere the doe flash
fire already in their eyes;
these deer, they have the knack of dying lewd.
(Translated from the French by Peter Thompson)
