We present this work in honor of the poet’s 90th birthday.

 

This rust inside me
the sun revives.

Obsessional smell
of the wave
on my eye

Terrace
where interminably a
telluric laughter unfurls

Laughter of an Algerian girl
(Jean, look
how the suns commingle
and the praying wave
caresses the stirrups

Fissures — butterfly elytra —
in the acrobat azure

And marrying the sea
—immense—
your wheat field beard

Translation by Pierre Joris