GISÈLE PRASSINOS

Nobody Is Going Anywhere

There is someone who is lost.

The world is so compact

the trees and the houses rise up for breath

in the blue there’s high alert

the streets are dying muffled strangled.

We push on thinking we navigate

through flesh through sounds through encounters

but nobody is going anywhere.

The defeated core still chases after life.

Whoever is lost and who knows it

lets their arms dangle

they will sleep

eyes shuttered down upon

a bird no longer in the sky.

Translated from French by Jade Cuttle