This grating at the foot of a tree on the place des Abbesses
for me
it is nothing but a grating at the foot of a tree on the place des Abbesses
For thirty years I have loved this square
but
it is not here that, when I was eight, my best friend said to me
Well, if that’s how it is, we’re not friends anymore
and besides he said it to me in a language
that is hardly spoken on the place des Abbesses
It is not before this doorway
that, on the day I turned six,
my father said to my mother
Listen — either you take him to the circus or I do
and I did not dare turn back toward my mother
who was watching the carriage drive away
So for me the place des Abbesses
is nothing, it is a landscape
and I am lost here as I am lost everywhere
and in the end, the place des Abbesses
I couldn’t care less
(Paris, February 1982)