Thursday, February 1
IT WAS A SENSELESS TIME* It was a senseless time the dead were seated at tables viruses downpours & smoke overwhelm lungs & TVs even the camels have lost their humps their fat the old ghosts are gathering at the city gates in a way it was easier in the age of certainties have yet to find what to replace them with (Olivia Elias, translated from French by Kareem James Abu-Zeid) *Translator’s note: The first two lines of this poem are from the poem “Est-ce ainsi que les hom-mes vivent” (Is this How Men Live?) by Louis Aragon (1897–1982), in the collection Le Roman inachevé (The Unfinished Novel).