INSECTS

Going off more towards the west, I saw insects in nine segments with enormous eyes like flies and a body trellised like miners' lamps, others with murmuring antennae; over here some with a score of pairs of paws that were more like clasps; and over there some made of black lacquerwork and mother-of pearl, which were crunching away under their feet like shellfish; others like daddylonglegs high above their paws, with little pin-like eyes as red as those of albino mice, virtually live coals mounted on stems, wearing an expression of unutterable frenzy; others with ivory heads, surprising baldnesses, towards whom one felt suddenly very brotherly and close, whose paws went on ahead of them like connecting rods zigzagging in the air.

Finally there were the transparent ones-- pitchers which were hairy in places; they went forward by the thousands, making a great glassworks, such a show window of light and of sun that after it everything seemed the ashes and end-products of dark night.

HENRI MICHAUX

(1930)


(Translated by Richard Ellmann)







Henri Michaux (1899-1984) was a poet and painter. As a boy he refused to eat for long stretches of time. At the age of 20 he worked as a sailor on a collier bound for South America. He often used icebergs as symbols in his poems. From 1956 onwards he began to experiment with mescalin. Many of his poems are set within imaginary countries where beings called Hacs, Emanglons and Meidosems are resident.