Down with the earth

A bird, wrecked by its rainy abode,

Headless slept hunched over. Underneath it hid the Lord.

The Lord tattooed with birds, even on His visage,

Is betrayed sometimes by the shadow of a wire mesh.

INQUEST

“Does God sign his work by means of the lizard?”

“Would the storm be his other signature?”

“What poem has the zebra beneath his erasures?”

“Must one render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s?”

The sky has its starry ceil,

The earth its brothels.

Cry of Christ rend the veil.

Jesus crowned with cries of swallows,

Appear and thunder in thy magnesium;

Set afire the press and take far from men

My photograph eternal.

Jean Cocteau