NOT A HAIR OF YOUR HEAD SHALL BE HARMED

These hairs that the wind used to caress on my nape

fall from my brush now.

Let them float across the gardens like ropes

that once fastened Gulliver to Lilliput

or those silk walls that entangle insects.

Soon the rain will trample them into soil

or the birds will gather them up: straw or hair,

it’s all the same to them, and man himself

has fabricated lampshades and soap

out of his own body. Don’t worry—

“Not a hair of your head shall be harmed”—

nor shall the dead flakes of skin, the dormant neurons,

the dark ditches of memory.

Nor the loved and hated words of Hamlet—really just sounds

but no less resilient than these hairs

dispersing in a current of air.

Claire Malroux (translated from the French)