"ton odeur voyage au fond de
mon sommeil"
Albert Aguesparse
You breathe in another world
But the cough betrays you.
I am waited on by efficient nurses
Paid to see to my bodily comfort
Until the end.
Your vists are extremely rare:
You have troops of friends down there
In Europe.
You will not speak about them
The nurses say I must never be excited
Before the end but sometimes for a moment
I hear them talking or see them in the mind's eye,
Dying I am possessed with a kind of second vision.
Sometimes you touch my skin, my skin drenched in sighs
But you withdraw at the first sign of disease.
You so hate illness! How sincere
Your "get well" wishes sound
To a dying man.
When you leave me you leave behind
The smell of decay as if to say
"I shall follow you one day
We all shall."
Your scent invades my sleep
When mountains are between us
For you have old scars too
Deep in your lungs and sometimes
You are short of breath and struggling
Wave your arms and cough
Like I do, like a dying man.
First published in Letteratura Heliopolis Issue no 2-1985
mon sommeil"
Albert Aguesparse
You breathe in another world
But the cough betrays you.
I am waited on by efficient nurses
Paid to see to my bodily comfort
Until the end.
Your vists are extremely rare:
You have troops of friends down there
In Europe.
You will not speak about them
The nurses say I must never be excited
Before the end but sometimes for a moment
I hear them talking or see them in the mind's eye,
Dying I am possessed with a kind of second vision.
Sometimes you touch my skin, my skin drenched in sighs
But you withdraw at the first sign of disease.
You so hate illness! How sincere
Your "get well" wishes sound
To a dying man.
When you leave me you leave behind
The smell of decay as if to say
"I shall follow you one day
We all shall."
Your scent invades my sleep
When mountains are between us
For you have old scars too
Deep in your lungs and sometimes
You are short of breath and struggling
Wave your arms and cough
Like I do, like a dying man.
First published in Letteratura Heliopolis Issue no 2-1985