Translated from the French by Marilyn Hacker

Man part animal part flower part metal part human
                                                    ‘The Approximate Man’, Tristan Tzara

*

Above our heads                    a vertical shadow
                                                                  vibrates
a shadow that flaps above our heads
a clandestine whistling
on the arid plain                        above our overloaded
                                                                    heads

and while there’s that whistling     that whistling
                                               unanticipated
as our buzzing skulls
a cement roof accommodates our moods
                  on the makeshift platform
                          the constellation set adrift
in the fog of the senses
...