Quatre Poèmes by Samuel Beckett

                     Samuel Beckett at home in Paris, 1964 by Henri Cartier-Bresson

1. Dieppe

again the last ebb
the dead shingle
the turning then the steps
toward the lighted town


2.
my way is in the sand flowing
between the shingle and the dune
the summer rain rains on my life
on me my life harrying fleeing
to its beginning to its end

my peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease from treading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts


3.
what would I do without this world faceless incurious
where to be lasts but an instant where every instant
spills in the void the ignorance of having been
without this wave where in the end
body and shadow together are engulfed
what would I do without this silence where the murmurs die
the pantings the frenzies toward succour towards love
without this sky that soars
above it's ballast dust

what would I do what I did yesterday and the day before
peering out of my deadlight looking for another
wandering like me eddying far from all the living
in a convulsive space
among the voices voiceless
that throng my hiddenness


4.
I would like my love to die
and the rain to be falling on the graveyard
and on me walking the streets
mourning the first and last to love me

translated from the French by the author