As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen.

I'm now making myself as scummy as I can. Why? I want to be a poet, and I'm working at turning myself into a seer. You won't understand any of this, and I'm almost incapable of explaining it to you. The idea is to reach the unknown by the derangement of all the senses. It involves enormous suffering, but one must be strong and be a born poet. It's really not my fault.

...these poets here, you see, they are not of this world:let them live their strange life; let them be cold and hungry, let them run, love and sing: they are as rich as Jacques Coeur, all these silly children, for they have their souls full of rhymes, rhymes which laugh and cry, which make us laugh or cry: Let them live: God blesses all the merciful: and the world blesses the poets.

I turned silences and nights into words. What was unutterable, I wrote down. I made the whirling world stand still.

As I descended into impassable rivers I no longer felt guided by the ferrymen.

I'm intact, and I don't give a damn.

Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed.