LAST DAY OF OCTOBER
soft humidity, heron’s cry, and now poplars stir in the strengthening wind. Banners.
A blindfolded young man appeared quietly if hesitantly, he seemed to play blind man’s bluff, leaning his elbows and hands in the air, he was alone, he seemed to dance. He advanced advanced as far as the shore, so close that I almost shouted for fear that he would fall because this place drops abruptly but his body must have felt the water – the mud – the softness and suppleness of grass, soil, the whole landscape finally and he said aloud: S T O P
Without removing his blindfold, he smiled superbly, as if he had won the lottery, a bet, I don’t know what, he turned on his heels, big pants, very long hair, a little white blond, in a ponytail, left from where he came, where?

○

Picked up a leaf.
Red.

Never such veins: blood vessels + scent of wind
(why the sudden memory of a bloody newborn lamb’s bleating, at the crossroads and on the curb’s strong grass, a packet of cotton between its mother’s legs, he descends, she does not think, tightens the cord and pulls)

+ Walkers in love, a dog with its head in the clouds.
Billionaires’ properties both sides of the road. Land bought at high prices, colonnaded houses with patios, pools, steam baths and jacuzzis, tennis courts, skate parks, gyms and conference halls, caretakers and leather-leashed mastiffs come and go behind iron gates, I saw a butterfly fly on one of these lordly houses, wings light and head heavy.
After so much stagnant heat, what wind what wind, it’s almost cold and everything moves so forcefully that you become a billiard ball shot at 4 corners.
– So now you’re going to try to draw your inside. The shapes that come to you. You can use color. Ten of us in the workshop got to work immediately except the young mechanic. And me.
– What inside? I know car engines, and basta. Fuck this thing, fuck it!
And he jumped up with his bag. Mine more than flat at my feet.

My name is someone under a head ram who wants out

The door slammed shut behind him, the workshop silent.
Richard (the host hired yesterday) shrugged, and resumed walking between the tables, the others did not move. Me neither.

○

I joined in by placing my open hand on the paper and tracing the outline of my fingers and wrist with my pen, as you do when you’re 12 years old, to uncover tracks, find secret hideouts, treaties,
a jeweled crown on the page.
Across the bedroom mirror a band of Apaches, undulating
as they swim, upstream on the wide river green at this point,
coyotes sitting under the moon, A cowboy, the sheriff, listen to the ground,
for leagues and leagues of horses, they gallop so fast that they will be
there soon, they’re approaching for sure, they are at least thirty, we have to
flee, flee, children in wagons, don’t cry, blow your nose,
before the mirror, everything flew by with much noise and odor.

The shapes that come to you, bestia!

      → go down the wells
      → go down the cave
      → fear the cave love
      → wash face
      → roll night sea
      → applaud ant
      → look at night from the balcony
      → go around Maïre ​​Island (Father Island)
      → get into a rowboat
      → trembling rump (horse-donkey)
      → raise basket

It’s a basket and the chain creaks, whether going down or up – or it’s a nail, a bit of scarlet meat (Cardinal Your Honor, on your knees!) skewered at the end, a beak that I kept, he goes back up dancing sometimes he peeps (heart an azure flake), we get engaged at the pine summit, grope one another in love, then open the shutters before daybreak, to witness the sky.

○

They are already preparing the parties, – sad word – bought flashy tinsel, balls and bells, snowy branches, have installed them everywhere, even around the cherubs that adorn the imitation cloister columns. Foie gras, capon, oysters, 33 desserts, I forget the minuet of cheeses. Let’s hope, if I’m still here, that I can snatch some REAL sheep’s cheese from the waiters’ undulating path.

○

No lakeside exercise today. Too cold + the young trainee is sick. All desire returns to the closet.
Anger stayed, seated on his throne and gaged the Restless people. It crawls, opens velvet eyes to escape and offer itself to the fangs: feeding anger, making anger blush, which blushes (with pleasure).

                         ☺ LITTLE SONG TO DO YOU GOOD

                        It was a little girl, it was a boy ,,,,,,,,,
                        her name was Suzette, his was Suzon ,,,,,,,,,
                        my shirt goes down, Your sex blows in the wind,
                        mine wants the same, unforgettable little boy
                        boy who keeps us warm, more than
                        a roadside of shooting stars and cutting ferns,
                        rolls Suzette, rolls Suzon in the ditch
                        blinks a glow-worm, My tongue plays
                        snail, azure tits, golden trout Glides in
                        Suzette, Suzon glazes Suzette, suckers and
                        sugars,,,,,,,,,

○

They discovered an emperor’s tomb on the other side of the lake.
And three horses of unknown origin that resist carbon dating.
A tree frog on my foot. His throat is beating. The moon is full in a sky of Three Kings. 4 stars particularly bright answer one other.
The little that happens to me, poisoned-amazed, sets off towards you without reservation, unchanged, comes back to me. No more news, or do they steal the messages, the letters? I am a wall where the ball bounces. I’m Daniel who writes you, writes no one, Daniel who throws out everything Daniel, Lina, Nata.
Crow!
“Wait less. Continue to build muscle. Your right heart is still smoky, the left is too open.”
So they say!

○

Don’t believe you’re immortal or mortal, only small, exposed to the true wind that shakes the tiles up there + bad encounters – from a brutal or displaced gesture – or feeling unworthy.
Here the tied, sadly posed at last despite perfume, gold, singing, so rigid despite the oils. Another me. Who calls the boys. Boys, lay me down in the wicker box, woven during 1000 and 1000 nights when he was hungry and afraid, each day defeated by the sweet sun, and there they push me, I float on the lake, noise of reeds, woodcocks waking, the sky spins above.

○

No more – no more – zero – where is the beloved red robin, Leaping, from the Rock, from the jetty to say goodbye, throw in the towel! I answer on the way, to the cliff, to the beat of the grougni, to the soupi, to the hare, sparrow, no whipping, no punishing, far from torment, far from horseman who kills at blink of an eye, killed by whole battalions, denies the killed their rights, kills and punches all the way down, did not kill sang danced loved and his mouth curled in velvet, mouth open with his teeth, shining, with love
Fever, who knows? That an eagle would quickly drop, like bird shit.
That goes straight to the jaws, clenched jaws, the pianist holds, and strikes keys which he breaks without breaking. This is art.
So they say. Don’t care.

○

The giant runs on the steppe, he runs, running he thinks
of his lost fiancée, running thinks, only thinks of her lost,
What the steppe thinks under his furious steps
is terrible, what does the steppe think of the giant’s thought who runs
and about his fiancée, he held her in his hand,
lifted her up to his eyes, not so she may speak but so she
can speak wiggling on his fingers, sitting there wiggling
she told him nice things
that he didn’t understand, he was
happy
happy
happy at that time
I want joy, I want joy, I want joy.

○

Consuela Santiago. Dressed in white and black.
Bird in a cold winter garden        ‴

                  ‴

                        ‴             ‴

‴

suddenly sobs and sobs, kisses my rings one by one, how to console a silk, an ember, how to understand a gesture so far from the clearing? Poverty and misfortune are not kind, sickness, pain are not kind: the bag of the unlovable, if only we could roll it away!
And if Joy has the Same Bag, Joy hides for a multitude of days, a multitude of horns painted red.
I’m up at the edge, I see you so small my mute friend, that I tremble, hold you against me, hug you, tuck you to me, break you.
How to connect with the people below who complain, and dismiss, bark?
“Everything will happen in time, once cleaned, renewed, you will be ready, don’t rush anything and don’t worry.”
So they say!

whoever wants out scrapes wool and earth his way, each suffocates, here, night is a rock

---

Read the original French text here.

Hélène Sanguinetti is a contemporary French poet who lives in Arles. Her publications include: Jadis, Poïena (Flammarion, 2025), Cargo Bleu Sur Fond Rouge (Lanskine, 2025), Et voici la chanson (Lurlure, 2021); Le Héros (Flammarion, 2008), Alparegho, Pareil-à-rien (Comp’Act, 2005 ; second edition L’Amandier, 2015), D’ici, de ce berceau (Flammarion, 2003), and De la main gauche, exploratrice (Flammarion, 1999). 

Ann Cefola‘s translations of Sanguinetti have appeared as Alparegho, Like-Nothing-Else (Beautiful Days Press, 2025), The Hero (Chax Press, 2018), and Hence, this cradle (Seismicity Editions, 2007). Her most recent poetry collection is When the Pilotless Plane Arrives (Trainwreck Press, 2021); and she is the recipient of a Witter-Bynner Translation Residency, and Robert Penn Warren Award selected by John Ashbery.