Only those who are the most migratory remain here.
Nothing is urgent.
It is a strange comfort to move about in a city,
wild and bristling with lights.
Then the twilight turns violet and melts into night.
The bright silver of midnight is a surprise,
in this incomparable city,
where shoulders barely covered,
enough to prevent nostalgia for a corner of France tormented by winter.
Daylight colours the nearest mountains
an unexpected violet and pink of a distant desert.
Stars and orange trees swung.
A hard winter, stayed for half a century.
Can Burgundy be my birthplace?
My poor, well-loved Burgundy.
Everything one says is true or becomes true.
And it’s a long time since I lived there.
The edifice is crumbling.
May it not be a fine thing to preserve?
In Normandy round the trunk of every tree
a carpet of pale pink petals are spread.
It would be the approach to a door,
to the beginning of something marvelous.
To find it I had to tear myself away from the little Mediterranean port.
The sleeping Mediterranean,
with its lusterless ultramarine sky.
It has not broken faith.
A stretch of small steps so that we may admire the hotel,
situated high beside the beach.
Thus, why not regard as a luxury October,
arriving after a sultry day.
Gone.
Each day, a sprig of violet, a sweet honeysuckle,
or throughout the high season, a rose.
In France I recall the beautiful features of the countryside,
warm from having cradled and nourished a human being.
Lovely!