VI.

 

NANA REFUSES TO POSE NUDE

FOR A PHOTOGRAPHER.

SHE GOES TO WORK

(MEN IN THE STREET—

THE FIRST CLIENT—

THE CLIENT REFUSED)

 

 

 

 

 

Shorter than verse is coffee time

counted between two appointments consumed

as soon as ordered actions collide

and in the mirror the tops of bodies

 

always without the time to reflect never

without the time to pay for coffee undrunk, nor the crucial

tip, he does not even remove his jacket

he resembles the waiter but in the negative

 

you’ve done theatre, you want

to act in movies, you no longer have money

in exchange they pose nude for this book

 

it’s a world in black and white: percolators

saucers, clasps, cigarettes, French makes

bubbles, it is not worth writing a sonnet about it.

 

(The opportunity’s lost already.)

 

 

 

 

 

Men dressed in their cars.

Cars inhabited by men.

To make love the men who love

Their car, take it, then take it out.

 

They go out to read these billboards

Who remain for us the same face

Of the city, of the spirit of this time

In love with cars and the Twist.

 

Movement stops. The billboard reigns.

And reading. And the question of sense.

One kills sense, one deciphers a look.

 

Now we no longer see the car

Women steer towards that room

Without clothes and that nobody lives in

 

 

 

 

 

First, this sort of waiting—that

Mouth, feet, the rest of the body,

The lost Esperanto of encaged eyes

Roughly agree. Then the temptation

 

To slip on Nana’s lines

To spell out, the lines she first reads in the usual

Direction, sometimes in the opposite direction

Of reading, the tattered billboards.

 

Unknown price, finally, impatient

Attempting again to negotiate

The exact nature of the transaction

 

In the time we can, extended value,

The bare wall against which to pin

The head crying “pardon” with the gift of tongues.

 

 

 

 

 

It must happen one day, it will happen

Some day a client, the first,

The last of the day…that one, no,

She refuses and this will be very bad,

 

But almost without thinking, she

Half undressed already, he still

Half dressed, talkative, barely

Looking at her and not giving

 

A damn whether or not she looks at him while

He prepares to do what is the object

Between them, of their whispered talks, or rather gestures

 

Of their gestures, admitting words defeated here

In advance, offering neck and belly

Like the dog who only asks to live.

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