That the End Enlighten Us
Dark enemy, you who brace us in the fight, let me, in the few days still left to spend, devote my strength and weakness to the light and so be changed to lightning in the end.
The gabbling mouths and animated eyes grow easier to ignore even as they work: the world gleams in their very hesitancies between high morning and light-headed dark.
If we could stop whining and overcome the fear that hems us in, behind, before, our vision might improve, the lost become more confident in their search for the buried door.
Let self-effacement be my way of blazing and poverty weigh our table down with fruit; death, far or near according to its choosing, sustain, as ever, the inexhaustible light. Derek Mahon Philippe Jaccottet was born in 1925 and lives in Grignan (Drome). His collections include L'Ignorant (1957), Airs (1967), A la lumiere d'hiver (1977) and Pewees sous les nuages (1983). Derek Mahon, whose recent collections include The Hunt by Night (1982) and Antarctica (1985), has translated a selection of Jaccottet's work to be published by Penguin next spring. It will include the poem printed here, taken from L'Ignorant.
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