Jacques Roubaud

Sonnet 19

For Phillipe Courrege 

With papers, crayons, ink, colors, with
Signs then words, with rules to assemble
Them, with persistence and the aid
Of habit (but who knows the quiet that

Rusted your power, the white Verlainian sky,
The cries of the schoolboy Author)
You built something more than language, something
Weighty and beautiful, rendering this difficult truce

Between thoughts, speech, and the hand:
Mathematical laborer, I salute
Your example, and I tell the men

Of tomorrow how this cloudwatcher diffused the magic,
How many stand upon the tool you wrought,
Worthy, genial, growing inside the signs