The Garden of Decalomania
by Paul Colinet
Translation: Michael Kasper
Let us go into the garden of decalomania...
There, all the doors are false and the fir trees, sly as oven mice.
A few flowers stare at the pond, the pond hidden by a somber sky.
Schools of rotten pike take off toward the moats and scaly pathways, unmindful of our eyes’ circular ciphers.
Let us go into the garden of decalomania...
The evening hides its faded gems there: bells and torchlight.
The dead come back, the living meander amidst milky peonies and scurrilous crocuses.
The infection climbs to the sky in a moist and curly flight; the heedful and over-ripe moon soaks up the hearts’ complaints.
The night is a machine with bellows. The air is stale, the wind, syrupy.
The teeth bleed.
Let us go quickly and unlock the gate to the garden of decalomania...
from The Lamp’s TalesNow available
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