On both sides and at the bottom, a forest encloses this landscape, or hugs it; protect him, perhaps; the trees stop everywhere at the same altitude on a clean line; above, pale heather, barely visible, and pastures where large solitary plants grow that are not picked.
Clear voices of sopranos call. The flocks of the flocks tinkle like the light that ricochets and break into splinters, scales, Lauze, moving waters, fragile flowers; trolls, Stellaria, acrid buttercups; and the high primroses that persist, their past season.
The valley is shrinking little by little, rising, it seems, towards a source, a pit, a sum from which springs bubbling water which dazzles. From the train, we can see the river and even, it is believed, the flanks of the fish: short gleams, yellow or silver, when they seek their food among the pebbles; but it is perhaps the flicker of the chopped water that deceives us. Maybe the river is empty.
The train stops here one last time and then it disappears in a tunnel which is like the asshole of the mountain, the orifice by which the known universe flows and is lost. When the convoy comes out the other side, it has crossed a border, has arrived in another country, whose name would not tell you anything, describes anything, denotes anything, only means its own arbitrariness. We simply say “there”. It is this “there” that designates us.
