Pierre Reverdy : Late in life

I am hard

I am tender
  
                             And I lost my time
                             Dreaming without sleeping
                             Sleeping while walking

Wherever I passed by
I found my absence
I am nowhere

Except the nothingness
But I’m hiding at the top of the bowels
At the place where the lightning has hit too often
A heart where every word left its keenness
And where my life drops to the slightest move.

Benyamin Bensalah

13.09.2020

Translated from the French poem of Pierre Reverdy, “Tard dans la vie”(1960).