Fuse

The lock of black hair on your nape is my treasure

My thought rejoins you and takes it and folds it over

Your breasts are the only shells I love

Your memory is the marker light we use to aim by night

While looking at my horse’s wide croup I’ve thought

of your hips

Here are the infantrymen who move to the rear while

reading a newspaper

The stretcher-bearer’s dog returns with a pipe in its mouth

A barn owl tawny wings dull eyes little cat’s face and

cat’s paws

A frisky mouse dashes through the moss

The rice has burned in the camp cooking pot

It signifies that one must take great care with things

The megaphone shouts

Increase range

Increase range our batteries’ love

Balances of batteries heavy cymbals

Shaken by the mad cherubim of love

In honor of the God of Armies

A bare tree on a hillock

The noise of tractors climbing in the valley

O old world of the 19^th century full of tall chimneys

so beautiful and so pure

Virilities of the century we’re in

O cannon

Brilliant casings of 75mm shells

Chime you piously

Guillaume Apollinaire