What I Saw

FOR JERÔME LEUBA

I’ve seen what generates your art
In Netter’s Atlas of Anatomy
In at least four colours

Twelve cranial nerves are what we have
Five for the eye, and one, the oculomotor nerve,
For the eyelid alone

And for the iris. My doctor says that it responds
Only to droplets trickled directly onto the affected organ Morning, noon and night

Pills and potions count for nothing. Isolated
From the body’s other signals
Through five hundred million years of evolution

No wonder it cannot distinguish blood from syrup or poison
Horror from beauty
Al are the same to that capricious creature

Touching nothing, and hating to be touched It rolls in its cave, thwarted
Beter by far a shard of glass

Texte de Lukas Bärfuss, « What I saw », in Status - 24 contemporary documents, Fotomuseum Winterthur, p.96-97, 2012

Lukas Bärfuss (1971) est un écrivain et dramaturge. Il vit à Zurich. Son roman Hundert Tage*, publié en 2008, (traduction anglaise publiée 2012) parle du rôle des travailleurs humanitaires dans le génocide du Rwanda.