AU FOND

{de l’Inconnu
pour trouver du Nouveau #

One of the worst things that can happen if you’re a hedgehog
is being flattened under the wheels of a heavy articulated lorry

in Brittany, somewhere on the road to Vannes (1971)

a walled medieval city with curved ramparts, the guidebook
describes as mischievous, and at night, thousands of tiny bats
that fly on leathery wings (you can hear them flapping)
around the pale crenelated battlements feasting on insects.

Crazy. It’s like a visual representation of a mass neurosis.

The lorry driver who stopped for us at twilight is pointing
to his radio (which was speaking) and asking what I think
of the war that’s developing (?) in the north of Ireland
and I’m trying to answer (in poor French) but I don’t know

a great deal about it. (I’m waiting for the riots at Attica)

The Catholic Irish want their civil rights, which
are being denied them by the Protestant administration,
imposed on that part of the country by the British
when the Ireland was divided? I hope that’s accurate.

I tell him it’s mal. Like Baudelaire? Les Fleurs du mal.

It’s around this point, the lorry flattens the hedgehog.

# to the depths of the unknown to find the new

.

Steven Taylor
Picture Nick Victor