That night, in the woods,
the nightingale bled so, that the lover’s hearts carved with the knife
t rembled on the trees’ trunks.
A Film by the Medvedkine Group
THE SLED-LADDER
by J. P. Thiebaud
If I must die one day, I would like it to be of love.
I would leave on the sled-ladder drawn by the great rooster,
rising towards the sun
crossing the rainbow along with all the world’s fireworks.
Multicoloured flowers nailed to the night of a journey.
The last, that of the seven reindeer
and the little children suddenly grown up.
I love all of this lush earth, swathed by so much grass
And so many trees, cut by a thousand furrows,
Criss-crossed by children of great and malicious men,
Like the storm of a heart sold beneath the counter
in the booth of the fifth merchant at the scrap market.
I love this whole earth that turns against the memory of time.
My sled
Our sled, since you were then with me
So close that no current of air passed between the ladders’ bars,
traversed the clouds.
The earth disappeared.
I no longer remember how many years
passed on this sled.
Time was never spoken of since it did not exist.
The sled-ladder stopped before the open door
of the lost paradise.
And we descended
separated, one after the other.
The rooster horse of the great journey was in agony.
And to celebrate this, out of paradise, music out front,
the saints appeared,
serious and upright like mathematics.
Time then started to exist.
I lost you there, the day of the first light,
At the first rifle shot, at the first tear,
at the first cry, at the first pain.
The saints had constructed reality,
The rooster horse died.
The open door of the lost paradise shut behind us.
One panel on you, one on me.
And the whole Sunday best horror of this holiday was revealed to me.
And everything started turning,
The sun, the hours, the wheels, the borne heads
that went rolling into the wicker basket.
Everything was structured,
everything had a name:
I was called mad and money appeared.
Water could now put out the fire
and the fire devour the houses.
It was the time of men.
We had the 17th parallel and wages of black misery.
Saints command men,
and men listen to them.
I never saw you again.
Perhaps you left up a mountain,
where the rivers of blue tears are born.
But a day will come,
I’m sure
when free men will rediscover beauty and love.
They will rediscover that they are Men
and made to live happily.
Subtitles: labournet.tv from a translation by Cartographies of the Absolute