Her again and the cats scrawling (a bandaged paw a venomous gaze).

They’re overlooking a lake.

Clapping your hands doesn’t scare them away.

They come back at regular intervals and they disappear.

Chronology of existence or vertical otherness.

In the books she translates, tragedy is both order 

and not.

Intermittently (like for a hot bath) she plunges

into a universe of diagrams of networks of maps. 

Other times at length she observes the detritus accumulated

behind a door. 

For vision is rooted in the cardiac plexus

and heroes are hired just about everywhere.

They like their cheese, their mustard, their cod.

Not knowing what could be slimy in the wisteria

she falls asleep in the din of the bees.

In her dream she works on a grammar of faults.

She declares with conviction that “it’s my grimoire.”

For preparing shad with sorrel, both ways

have their fans.

In her rapport with ghosts, very quickly she learns

how much they exact, much more than exist.

She has to interpret all the versions they offer.

That way they leave traces of circular arcs behind.

Past of the past must all be brought back.

I can assure you that this is not blasphemy.

The city’s whole destiny’s what is at stake.

translated from the French by Lindsay Turner