Michel Deguy: Prose

I miss you but now
No more than those I don't know
I invent them scattering the faces of you
Across the earth that was rich in worlds
(When each king guided an island
By guesswork of its goods (ash of
Bird, manganese and salamander)
And the shipwrecked federated the edges)

Now I miss you but
Like those I don't know
Whose impatience I imagine with your face
I have thrown your teeth to dreams
I have treated you off-the-shoulder

(There are vessels leading back to the Pacific
Its water steams After the faithful have left
The ocean slavers like a Mongol on the bed pillows
Dead meat balled up and hair in the salt gutter
An elephant blasphemies Poseidon)

I don't miss you more than those
I don't know now
Orphic you became I threw
You dismembered absence in several vales
You changed me to host I know
Or make it up 

translated from French  by Anne Talvaz