Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people.

Today I have so much to do: I must kill memory once and for all, I must turn my soul to stone, I must learn to live again. Unless ... Summer's ardent rustling is like a festival outside my window.

I myself, from the very beginning, Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium Or a reflection in someone else's mirror, Without flesh, without meaning, without a name. Already I knew the list of crimes That I was destined to commit.

That was when the ones who smiled Were the dead, glad to be at rest.

You will hear thunder and remember me, And think: she wanted storms. The rim Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson, And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.

We are all carousers and loose women here; How unhappy we are together!

No, not under the vault of another sky, not under the shelter of other wings. I was with my people then, there where my people were doomed to be.