breath and the beating heart

11:46 AM Posted by James Owens




Que je disparaisse afin que ces choses que je vois deviennent, du fait qu'elles ne seront plus choses que je vois, parfaitement belles.

Je ne désire nullement que ce monde créé ne me soit plus sensible, mais que ce ne soit plus à moi qu'il soit sensible. A moi, il ne peut dire son secret qui est trop haut. Que je parte, et le créateur et la créature échangeront leurs secrets.

Voir un paysage tel qu'il est quand je n'y suis pas...

Quand je suis quelque part, je souille le silence du ciel et de la terre par ma respiration et le battement de mon coeur.



Let me disappear so that these things I see should become, because they will no longer be things that I see, perfectly beautiful.

I desire not at all that this created world should be no more sensible to me, but that it no longer be to me that it is sensible. To me, it cannot say its too lofty secret. Let me part, and the creator and his creation will exchange their secrets.

To see a landscape as it is when I am not there….

When I am somewhere, I sully the silence of the sky and earth by my breathing and the beating of my heart.

Simone Weil
La pesanteur et la grâce






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5 comments:

Marion McCready said...

"a fist of blood and fog", lovely ending. The gentle tone of the poem makes the violence of the crow's death and the language that much eerier! The landscape, so flat, an everlasting road!

Lady Jo said...

Hello James

Les mêmes paysages chez moi, pourtant tu es si loin d'ici...

amitié et bises

James Owens said...

Marion: Yes, eight years here, and I am still astonished by these endless straight lines in the landscape, these untameable volumes of sky.

James Owens said...

LadyJo: Oui, c’est toujours une surprise --- les lieux lointains sont, non seulement réels, mais reconnaissables :-)

Roxana said...

this post aches in me, in so many ways - so many ways to long for erasure, for the disappearance of the self, yet for the other kind of grace, the grace bestowed by flesh and by light and sound and colour touching and penetrating the flesh...

this poem is perhaps one of my favourite... i have learned it by heart...