from End of an Afternoon in Marrakech
from "The Word Madness Is Only a Word, In the Poem"

Someone says you're going completely mad, how should I
        know?
It's true that in your letters, in your speech, there is something
        dark
Like fear at the same time as real conviction, I look
At your face. It is strict and tender, forgiving, trusting
Trust is a painful caress, time never says a thing
About what¹s going to happen tomorrow. I love you and
        intimacy is shot through with silence and death.
With silence.

I don't understand a thing about what may be your madness
But I do think writing a poem isn¹t at all
Like plunging as you do into words.
Your language strays off into so much more unbearable truth
        and scary darkness
While my poem is reassured by rhythms, measured, as they
        have to be.
What could I say about the violent mix of your laughter and
        your tears?
Or else I¹ve never been a poet. Could be. With nothing to lean
        on between your heart and the word madness.

The torment of being sane and not hearing it very well,
That language invaded by incoherence and senseless certainty:
Misery or exacting happiness. My poem just doesn't get it.

The torment of being sane and not talking well.

Suddenly your speech or your letters are shot through with
        darkness,
And perhaps it is in that nocturnal part of yourself that love
        stirs, and worries.
Of course I'm afraid of the silence and the incomprehensible
        hubbub everywhere,
But it really is near them that I have to love you
And touch your heart, which is frightened
At its inability to sew up
The fine silk of the world and its dirty rags.

Because the wind shakes up the bulk of a city outside
The act of writing thinks of itself as carried away.
But imagining you gone off into the traps and misery of your
        reason mixed with madness
It makes us feel like going away ourselves
The music of the poem becomes unbearable
Yet all we can manage is this bit of writing that seems unable to
        do a thing,
All we have, to let people know we¹re there in the insane
        scattering of the world.
To let you know.