War fool

I finally made it,

I have full control of myself.

On the plagued beaches of Normandy, 

as bombs fall, 

I have perfect indifference to death,  

for I imagine myself splinter among splinters.

I will come home and not be the war fool,

I'll still know how to love and drink myself into a daze,

joking with friends and when I remember the bullets,

the bombs and mangled limbs, 

it will be like a tale of gnomes and

princes submerged in mud.

I love you and you don't know how much, like the dewdrop 

that fell on the fields dug by bombs.

There isn't a trench of blood where you weren't there too  

to remind me of the ordinary Sunday bustle,

with the pasta with meat sauce that had been cooking since dawn 

and the chincagerie
 

you used to put on in your little flowered dress and your hair down.

I am not a war fool,

I am a wise man who hides in the shade of the tamarisk trees

And still dreams of your kisses