Poor Suburb

I
They are moving out all the blue sky, in rags in their wicker trunks
Their dreams’ round trips.
And the big wool eiderdown, stuffed like a cloud about to rain.

The woman’s round belly moves
The earth turns a bit in her eyes.

They say nothing, go nowhere
They sit or stand on the street corner, huddled against each other.

II
On Wednesdays the buses unload their crews of sad children
Like a rockslide of toys in a dime store window
Where they sell cotton dolls and red cardboard birds

The blue schoolgirl hops across the road in the white crosswalk
With a furtive hand she strokes the muzzles of the automobiles
That would enjoy, without daring, kissing each of her cheeks and lightly holding her by the waist.

III
Long ago we knew each little old man by his first name
One sat in the back, on the right, repeating that he had suffered
On a rough-hewn wood cross

But it’s been a long time since the owner
Of the pale gray upper rooms with no view has known the names of his renters
The puffy angels sleep on the ground on folded boxes

The rain walking across the roofs
Goes straight from the sky without turning back.

IV
Shutters dressed to the nines, moon and sun in the same bed
The pink whore is a clock that strikes a quarter to six on the opposite sidewalk
Unrelentingly in the same place, every day at the same time

Closed woman:  cuts on her fairy wrists
She has kept her little girl heart that swells when she makes love.

V
White paper tablecloth, red paper napkin
Margarita Pizza, Gran Duca Chiaretto
Bottled in Cambrai
Terrace for observing the passers-by
Easy and distant voices
The guests’ hearts applaud
Nibbling on bits of the sky
Sunshine right in your plate
Light of shoulders and of face

This life sizzles between our fingers and goes up in smoke
The taste of alcohol and tobacco:  we wish it would last
Above all no moving; no upsetting anything anymore.
So that this bird’s song will continue
Dying, on a twig, balances.

VI
Summer silks soft to the touch
Night bodices undone on the promenade
Along the ponds in the public gardens
Glistening with threads of women and stars
Beneath the black wool of the trees voices knit
Brown skin.  The promenade is still beautiful.
Powder in our eyes.  Blue of the rings under your eyes
The moon in its July halo.

VII
The house when it rains is a domino box
The sparrows’ tiny hooves trot on the roof

Near the lock gate, the devil’s doll is humming
Her blue bicycle under the apple tree

Behind the radiator some wasps come back to life
Though we thought them long dead.

From Emondes, JMM, Fata Morgana, Montpellier, 1986