.
He chased the moon, he left the night behind. One by one the stars have fallen into a net of living water.
In the shadows under the aspens a strange fisherman waits impatiently with one eye open, alone, hidden under his big hat; and there is a quivering on the line.
Nothing caught, he loads his bag with gold pieces whose radiance vanishes once closed up inside his basket.
But another angler had been biding his time a little way from the shore. He'd been fishing less ambitiously in a muddy puddle left behind by the rain. This water, heaven sent, sparkled with stars.
But another angler had been biding his time a little way from the shore. He'd been fishing less ambitiously in a muddy puddle left behind by the rain. This water, heaven sent, sparkled with stars.
Pierre Reverdy: Chacun sa part from Poèmes en Prose (1915), trans. TC
Il a chassé la lune, il a laissé la nuit. Une à une les étoiles sont tombée dans un filet d'eau vive.
Derrière les trembles un étrange pécheur guette avec impatience d'un oeil ouvert, le seul, caché sous son large chapeau; et la ligne frémit.
Rien ne se prend, mais il emplit sa gibecière de pièces d'or dont l'eclat s'est éteint dans le panier fermé.
Mais un autre attendait plus loin du bord. Plus modeste il pêchait dans la flaque de boue qu'avait laissé la pluie. Cette eau, venue de ciel, était pleine d'étoiles.
Marine diatoms (phytoplankton encased within a silicate cell wall) found living between crystals of annual sea ice in McMurdo Sound, Antarctica: photo by Gordon P. Taylor, 1983 (NOAA)
Dew drops on a Gerbera: photo by Friedrich Böhringer, 2006
Dew adhering to a spider's web in the morning: photo by Luc Viatour, 2007