'a girl is going to enter your brain...' - jean-pierre rosnay

'A girl is going to enter your brain...'
by Jean Pierre Rosnay (tr. J Kates)


            A girl is going to enter your brain.  Pay attention all of you because you
will be given no information about her, except for this: she is eleven years old
on an autumn day in 1908. Her father does this, her mother does that. Of course
they are both alive at the time we are speaking of. The girl laughs, something
girls often do. You may note that her parents are French. Later she will come to
France. You come across this girl in Vienna, in an Austria still delightful at the
time we are speaking of. She is wearing black patent leather shoes; not for one
instant does she suspect what her fate will be. She is eleven years old, I’ve already written that. Some thirty years from now, with her husband, she will fight in the Resistance and be deported to Ravensbruck.

            For this one instant, for all eternity, she is laughing. She is eleven years old.

            After you have read or listened to this poem, you will be able, if you
close your eyes, to see her clearly, to hear her laughing. Nothing will escape
you, not the color of her eyes, of her hair, of her pretty little dress, of her white
stockings.

            But I have written too much about this. I leave you and go back to the
streets of Vienna where flares of music float along as in a movie.

            And the girl is smiling at me, she who does not know, innocent as she is,
that she has died, as have I.

            Reader how are you doing? How do you fit into this existence?