The Experience

Red lips are not so red

   As the stained stones kissed by the English dead.

Kindness of wooed and wooer

Seems shame to their love pure.

O Love, your eyes lose lure

   When I behold eyes blinded in my stead!

Your slender attitude

   Trembles not exquisite like limbs knife-skewed,

Rolling and rolling there

Where God seems not to care:

   Till the fierce love they bear

Cramps them in death’s extreme decrepitude.

Your voice sings not so soft,—

   Though even as wind murmuring through raftered loft,—

Your dear voice is not dear,

Gentle, and evening clear,

   As theirs whom none now hear,

Now earth has stopped their piteous mouths that coughed.

Heart, you were never hot

   Nor large, nor full like hearts made great with shot;

And though your hand be pale,

Paler are all which trail

   Your cross through flame and hail:

Weep, you may weep, for you may touch them not.

Wilfred Owen (1893-1918)

On joue les funambules sur un câble invisible
On jongle avec des bulles, on défie l’impossible
Dans une main la colombe, dans l’autre le calibre
J’ai beau tendre les bras, je ne trouve pas l’équilibre

-20Syl, Equilibre