The cloud hanging over the valley has been there forever
Trains come from the coast cross it without stopping
Gloomy travelers would photograph the cemetery but not the children, despite the
little bells they wore on their ankles
Standing on the rooftops
We loosed their names in the air with holiday balloons
We invited them to share the cries of our ears of corn
And touch the mouldy robe of the Saint in her reliquary
We would beg them to carry away in their luggage the wind's hyena laughter when it
rained on the winter
And rained on the cemetery and the well-preserved smiles of the dead cramped
beneath their windowpane
And the mothers shook out the sheets to drive away stubborn souls and
when they cried for no reason
With the same movements the mothers drove off jackals and God who had no place in
their beehives
Nor in our book whose pages we turned in the other direction than the planet's
turning.