Life is a long walk at night.

Most people lie to themselves, pretending they won't be dead when they die. Looking at the stars in the dark sky above, they mistake the glittering lights with fatum signs or eyes of angels that don't exist. I'm a materialist : I believe that a human being is a body that lives and thinks, and eventually dies.

Each instant of life is a step towards the ineluctable day of our death. We know we are dying, as the world we live in is collapsing : moutains are slowly crumbling and the sky is full of vanished suns. It's just a question of timescale.
The idea of Death reveals that nothing and no-one lasts for ever, and that, one day, the Universe will exist without us, just as it was before we were born.

This is not a terrifying idea. When Yves Bonnefoy, the most talented French poet alive, wrote his firts book of poems 'Le traite du pianiste' - 1946, a kind of violent surrealist nightmare, he later felt he was haunted by the Knight of Mourning. Then his poetry went beyond, in the peaceful acceptance of our death to come, to reveal the enchanted Real World. Death is a reflection of Eternity upon our daily life and gives value to each instant because it's forever lost.

So what is poetry ? Maybe a sensibility, a capacity to feel what makes so precious the instant gone by (a tree speaking with the voice of the wind, a ray of light, a smile on a friendly face...) and, by the magic of writing, a capacity to create an harmony between our inner world and the world outside, made of ephemeral miracles... It's a two-ways road opened in the hearts of heart, with your voice coming out and the world coming in.

Poetical life is a joyful walk at night.