208
PARTISAN REVIEW
like a thoughtful school girl's. Then we embraced so long and
so
tightly that the melted snow hollowed out a furrow more narrow
than
an infant's cradle, and when we got up again, the blanket between
the two white breasts reminded us of those mules in Asia which climb
down the snow-saddled mountains.
Then the blue of the sea grew darker and the cliff turned violet;
it was the hour when the sudden evening cold tore from the iceberg
those crystal cities which crumble in an ice dust with a noise like
the explosion of a world, and expose under the Cyclopean volutes of
a blue wave a ship's belly chapped with dark seaweed, or the heavy
snorting of a plesiosaurus' bath. This cannonade of a world's end
was fired nearer and nearer to the edge of the horizon, like a Waterloo
of the solitudes, for us alone. Much later, the night, fallen very cold,
was pricked in the great silence by the distant gushing of the tall
phantom white-plumed geysers, but I already held Jane's frozen hand
in mine, and we came back under the light of the pure Antarctic
stars.
JULIEN GRACQ
(Translated by Gerrie Thielens)
EXPLANATION OF METAPHORS
Far from time and space a man's gone astray,
Slender as a hair, amJ;>le as the dawn,
His nostrils foaming, his two eyes revulsed,
His hands stretched forward to touch the decor
(Non-existent). But someone's sure to ask,
What is the meaning of this metaphor:•
"Slender as a hair, ample as the dawn"
These nostrils eluding three dimensions?
If
I speak of time, then it is not yet,
If
I speak of a place, it has vanished,
If
I speak of a man, he'll soon be dead,
If
I speak of time, it no longer is,
If
I speak of space, a god destroys it,
Or of years, it is to annihilate,
If
I hear silence a god comes screaming
And his bellows can only do me harm.
