a translation from the French

They'd been dragging me down that river, it seemed, forever, when suddenly the ropes were gone: howling savages had targeted my guides, and nailed their naked bodies up to posts; and my poor crewmen, carrying their loads of wheat and English cotton—once their cries too had faded in the distance, the river let me go wherever I pleased. (That winter, I ran through choppy seas deafer than a child. A rocky spit torn from the mainland would not have suffered more.)

My sea-christening was blessed by storms. For ten whole nights I danced upon the waves (eternally rolling, one might say, their victims), and never missed the useless harbor lights. Sweeter than sour apples are to children, green water soaked my firwood hull, washing away the stains of wine and vomit, taking away my rudder and my anchor...and from that time on I have bathed in the milky poetry of the sea, infused with stars, feeding on blues and greens. Occasionally a pale and thoughtful corpse floats by, or, suddenly pulsing within all that endless blue, a delirious and slow rhythm sounds beneath the day's hot ashes: stronger than alcohol, vaster than art—the bitter seething red of love...

I've seen skies split with lightning, and waterspouts, and surf, and currents; I have known dusk, and morning exaltations wrought by doves; and sometimes I've seen what man just thought he saw. I've seen the low sun, bruised and mystical, fling out its purple varicosities (they could be actors in an ancient drama) upon the distant, heaving, shuddering waves. I've dreamed the green night with its dazzling snow, and kisses slowly rising through the sea, the secret pulse of trees, and phosphorescent choirs, their yellow-blue awakening. For months on end I've watched the swell battering the reefs like herds of bawling cows—but never dreamed that Mary's luminous feet might fit a muzzle to the gasping ocean. I've stumbled upon, savez-vous, unbelievable Floridas, where flowers mingle with the eyes of panthers dressed in human skin, and rainbows stretch like bridles down into the sea to rein in sea-green herds. I've seen enormous belching swamps, traps where bloated beasts rot in the rushes, downpours during lulls in the storm, and distances plunging towards the abyss; glaciers, silver suns, mother-of-pearl waves, ember skies, and hideous wrecks at the bottom of murky bays, where anacondas, eaten out by maggots, drop from twisted darkly perfumed trees.

I wish my children could have seen those dolphins of the blue waves, those fish of gold, those schools of singers, but a foam of flowers lulled my wayward drifting, and silent winds briefly gave me wings, and then the sea, that weary homesick martyr, whose sob propels my gentle rolling, raised up to me her honeysuckle flowers, and I was left, like a woman on her knees...