Le Choix

If I try a bit harder
to hold myself
beneath the surface,
I will drown and be
no more, no fish,
no rock, no twig,
not even a lark of
a thought, a naught.

If I rise like a bubble
and blink in the sun
with a glint of a fish
scale jumping up for
bugs, then mere air
will carry me along
like the odd, thin-gray
bird one spots in
winter pictures.

An eye underwater
cannot discern a
lakedrop from a tear:
ils ne tomberont pas
dans l'antigravité des
eaux, ils se fixeront
derrière ces bulbes
en les poussant ouverts
comme les yeux morts.
(they will not fall
in the antigravity of
waters, they will fix themselves
behind the bulbs
in pushing them open
like dead eyes.)

The eye caught by
sun wakes up: hot
it weeps out effortlessly
its acidy depths, then
dries of its own saltiness:
les larmes, un son,
l'appel d'une mouette,
la lêvure de tristesse,
l'ouverture d'un trou
(tears, a sound,
the call of a gull,
the leavening of sadness
ouverture of a hole)

je ne voudrais pas
être traître du soi:
(i would not want
to be a traitor to the self:)
i will plumb a grave
with empty hands,
i will dig at silky ash
then terra firma,
mud, salt, river, rock
then molten lava
until they come.