COOL GUY

Au hasard

You were there today

while I listened to those men

on the radio

speak about Bresson:

how every shot

had its logic,

how every shot

was a world unto itself.

A world

with its own language that

thought itself,

saying everything

it didn’t say.

The boy in that film

walking into a trap, his boss

returning

from across the street,

catching him

red-handed.

How slowly he moved:

how he looked

now left, now right, savouring

each gesture; how

you saw him from

inside of his shop, that

place where

seconds later

he would arrive.

The girl in that

other film, defiant

in the face of—

Or Balthazar,

flaming cloth

tied to his tail,

nowhere to go but

that outcrop from which to

cast one last glance

on the world that hated him so,

on the world he loved.