Jacquemard and Julia

Once the grass, at the hour when the roads of earth would accord in their decline, tenderly raised its stems and lit its radiance. The cavaliers of the day were born in sight of their loves and the castles of their lovers counted as many windows as the abyss has of light thunderstorms.

Once the grass knew a thousand devices that would not cloy. It was the providence of faces bathed in tears. It incanted the animals, gave asylum to error. Its expanse was comparable to the sky which had vanquished the fear of time and lightened sorrow.

Once the grass was good to madmen and hostile to the executioner. It was wedded to the threshold of always. The games it invented had wings on their smile (games absolved and equally fleeting). It wasn’t hard for any of those who having lost their way wished to lose it forever.

Once the grass had established that night is worth less than its power, that wellsprings do not wildly complicate their courses, that the kneeling seed is already half in the bird’s nib. Once, earth and sky hated each other but earth and sky were alive.

The inextinguishable dryness flows. Man is a stranger for the dawn. Nevertheless in pursuit of the life that cannot yet be imagined, there are wills that quiver, murmurs that confront each other and children hale and hearty who discover.

René Char