Whereas saliva heals the flesh’s wounds:
If you press your soft mouth for very long to a body,
If you briefly glide your sharp mouth across a body,
In both cases…

Wounds will open in your flesh
Then forget themselves there.
There is no third thing in this city
And in the other city… And in the other one…

Don’t wake sleeping aches!
Neither the city’s, nor the city dwellers’

Keep your saliva inside your cheeks,
Don’t kiss those who haven’t the strength to say “no”
Don’t gather on the city’s hills
Like the pushy crowds
Don’t stamp around the hills, don’t wake the city’s aches
Don’t stand on the seven aches’ seven hills,
This work is not for you
Because:
If you bite, your mouth will hurt
If you lick, you’ll get poisoned
In any case, it is you who shall fall in this city

Still, a person can only be alone in a city with a sea.
Because you can turn your face to the sea. That way, you
turn your back on the crowds. As for cities without a sea,
whichever way you turn there are people, whichever way
you turn.

For that reason, people should get along well with each
other in cities without a sea. As for cities with a sea, those
who want to can also live without running into people’s
faces.

Go down. Go down to the sea
If you turn your face to the sea
You’ll turn your back on the shameless crowd
Only in a city with a sea may you be by yourself
By the sea

People are all the same. Gradually turn into mirrors.
Only the opposite of your face,
Its reverse is reflected in these people’s waters.
Let go, don’t look at those mirrors,
Let your retinas register a thousand disparate waves
Your nape to the sun, your forehead to the wind

Look, look carefully, may your eyes brim with sea
In any case you’ll certainly
Encounter, even in this city,
A person who’ll say, “Some sea got in your eye” to someone,
“A bird got stuck in your hair” to someone else

Who’ll lean their ear against your mind
And look not at your face, but wherever you look
Who, when you say, “They’re crowding the sea, the water hurts,”
Won’t gape at your mouth, but gaze at the sea

In this city of seven aches
This person will touch your aches without waking them
Lull your pain without digging it up

Go down. Go down to the sea

Festival

As I went down to the sea, I passed the city’s alleys.
I saw women and men.
Women and men were returning.