translated by Katerina Anghelaki-Rooke

In your cool living room a forest rustles.
These pieces of furniture that you hear breathing
Still keep in their foliage
The flying creatures of instinct. And if they creak
Each time a new visitor walks in
It must be because they feel somewhere a hidden axe
Being sharpened. This time
It is just a polite smile.
At night they panic
And their thick nail made from a root
Is thrust
Into a rock of cement. Their branches
Ruin the ceiling; here look at the cracks
In the wood as it groans. Leave them alone;
Neither truth nor deceit will smooth down
The knots on the bark of the old age; leave them.
And if the ticking of the worm acts like
The beat of their heart
They keep dreaming of the heroic flame
That will separate at last the spirit
From the body
– Gleam from coal.