Stucco Angel
by Jean Baudrillard

If the very paths
soluble even before
the absence of wind
on the water where
they hunt, and where
the animals they hunt
resemble them
the amorous spider
immobile
in the direction of the wind
so fructifying
like an iced cider
in the sensual space
of a cellar – for
coolness is a
passion and your hands are
alive and slender like
birds of passage –
or multiplied
by the falling night and
steamed by the ground, or
exonerated by the sun, and
cast in nonchalance
to the ground – but
to another verticality
than that
of walls – to the image
of others, not of the self, and
in unreality of others
if need be, but outside of
ourselves, always, toward
the reconciliation of
centrifugal forces taken
in the absurdity of landscape
what then?
We laugh through the oral
rent on the threshold of
de-motion, for the Medusas
of the notion are
the will paralysed by
the ruse of broken lines.

* * *

A bird, is she or
deer dress
or clover smoke
or doll of medlar fruit
or like a wild cat
imaginary with a piercing cry
in the perfect darkness
the föhn or the violent wind
less far and brief
but far as if it were yesterday
clearer
from the animality of a new book
the unmown grass
any day
by the clouds of pink stucco
and soft psychological penetration
white mass
without audience
then the red and green dawn
that doesn’t conduct noise
separates us
you run right ahead
secret sign of solicitude
and so everywhere one wants to be
present before having
arrived when it is others
who speak but
one has not yet  finished with
real hair
real hands
the very evidence
A bird, is she or
deer dress
or clover smoke
or doll of medlar fruit
it is her
unlyrical and surreptitious
less far and brief, but far
as if it were yesterday
it is her of whom
I would never have had the idea
on my own.

 

Originally published: Baudrillard, J., & Genosko, G. (2001). The Uncollected Baudrillard (1st ed.). SAGE Publications Ltd.
Stuco Angel. Translated by Sophie Thomas
Published in the given issue by kind permission of Gary Genosko