I Am Writing To You From A Distant Land

1
Here she says, we only have one sun a month, and for a very short time. You rub your eyes for days in advance. No use. The weather doesn't change. The sun comes by appointment.
Then there are a million things to do while the light lasts, so that
we hardly have time to look at one another.
The annoyance for us at night is when you have to work,
and you have to, dwarfs are always being born.
2
When we walk in the country, she confides to him, we often come upon tremendous masses. They are mountains, and sooner or later you have to bend your knees. No point in resisting.
You couldn't advance even in hurting yourself.
I don't want to disturb you with this. I could say other things if I really wanted to disturb.
3
The dawn is grey here, she told him. It wasn't always that way.
We don't know whom to accuse.
At night the cattle give great bellows, long and flute-like at the end.
People are compassionate, but what is there to do?
The smell of eucalyptus trees is all about: kindness, serenity, but it can't protect us from everything, or do you think it really can protect us from everything?
4
Let me add one more word, or rather a question.
Does water flow also in your country? (I don't remember whether
you told me) and it makes you shudder if it is really water.
Do I like it? I don't know. I feel so alone in it when it's cold.
It is something else when it's warm. So, how can I judge?
How do you judge, tell me that,
when you speak of it frankly, without subterfuge?
5
I wrote to you from the end of the world.
I want you to know that.
Often the trees tremble. We gather the leaves.
They have a tremendous number of veins.
But what is the point? There is nothing between them
and the tree, and we disperse awkwardly.
Couldn't life continue on earth without the wind?
Or must everything tremble forever?
There are also subterranean stirrings, and in the house
waves of anger coming up to you like serious individuals
who want to extract confessions from you.
We see nothing, except what matters little to see.
Nothing, and yet we tremble. Why?
--Henri Michaux
"I Am Writing To You From A Distant Land"
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seabirds of East Grand Terre Island, La.
by Charles Reidel
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brown pelican
blue heron
great egret


like a bird without a nest
like a stranger in the night
and my soul cries out for rest
and the end is not in sight