I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don't work, I study the stars.

In Eden who sleeps happiest? The serpent.

The poem is itself a mirror.

How can I turn from Africa and live?

The sigh of History rises over ruins, not over landscapes, and in the Antilles there are few ruins to sigh over, apart from the ruins of sugar estates and abandoned forts.

The voice does go up in a poem. It is an address, even if it is to oneself.

She's a rare vase, out of a cat's reach, on its shelf.