In Samarkand, I picked the green fruits of an old tree.

All of them had given their juice, as every soul has its taste.

Who has seen in himself the moons, the cracks, the lava?

The grounded boats, the slumped sails, the hoped-for capes?

Like a dung beetle rising in the dune, I am a mirage.

You spread your absence everywhere.

What would I know of your presence?

You empty everything from your sky.

Today I love bread and salt.

Tomorrow I will be a friend of millet and wine.

I will lap up dreams and drink open waters.

Everything comes back one day, what use is time, for what memory?

Tonight I am ruin, dust, grave, gas, shard of earth, sandy port, blind worm, logical continuation.

Spastic heart, knotted throat, living soul.

I neither hide nor do I show. I wait for the slow one.

Already game, promised prey, drunk with nothing, I sing the shadow of a pean, the echo of an hallali.

Streams and rivers, horizontal leaks. On the horizon, the sea is so vertical.

On the pebble, water flows, far from thirst.

I don’t know the existence and the essence. I don’t know the weight of the mountains to come.

Of the possible heaps, the future number is very large.

My hands form a cup, filtering drunkenness, and the caress is a pain.

I didn’t believe in the flood, at the top of the hill, but it came, without words.

Beauty, joy, life: moons, curves, teeth, breaths, shadows.

Drink it all, and forget all that is missing and forgotten.

See: they see, and they do not see.

Give the pain a name of sweetness, a sure sign.

Cherish your peace. Hate that which kills.

Find the thread, and the eye of the needle, in the raw light.