Translated by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow

To Pablo Picasso

The big white cold storage room in the mists of time

That sends out shivers to the city

Sings to itself

And the musical background of its song resembles night

Which does what it does well and weeps because it knows it

One night when I was keeping watch over a volcano

Without a sound I opened the door of a cabin and threw myself at

the feet of slowness

I found it that beautiful and that ready to obey me

It was only a spoke of a bent wheel

When the dead passed by it leaned against me

Braised wines never lit the way for us

My woman friend was too far from the dawns that make a ring around

an arctic lamp

At the time of my thousandth childhood

I charmed that shining torpedo fish

We see the unbelievable and we believe it in spite of ourselves

The way one day I took the woman I loved

We make lights happy

They sting themselves in the thigh in front of me

Possession is a clover to which I’ve artificially added the fourth leaf

The dog-days brush against me

Like falling birds

Beneath the shadow there’s a light and beneath that light there are

two shadows

The smoker puts the finishing touches on his work

He’s looking for the union of himself and the landscape

He’s one of the shivers of the big cold storage room