does even photography kill, like words, like thought?

The Bird

--- Bird, what are you after here, fluttering over my books?

Everything in this narrow room is foreign to you.

--- I know nothing of your room, and I am far from you.

I have never left my wood. I perch on the tree

Where I have hidden my nest, so reinterpret

Whatever you are seeing. Forget about a bird.

--- But I see you right here, your feet, your beak.

--- Doubtless you can span the distances.

If your eyes have found me, it's not my fault.

--- But you are here, since you answer.

--- I am answering the fear of man I always feel.

I feed my little ones and have no other diversion.

I guard them in secret in the dark of a tree

That I believed as dense as one of your walls.

Leave me on my branch and keep your words.

I fear your thought like the shot of a gun.

--- Calm the heart that hears me under your feathers.

--- Ah, what horror your feigned kindness was hiding!

You have killed me. I fall from my tree.

--- Well, I need to be alone, and even the gaze of a bird ....

--- But I was far away, in the deep heart of my wood!

-- Jules Supervielle

(my translation)

my gratitude to Roxana, who showed me this poem