Death is an almost overwhelming reality in Yves Bonnefoy's poetry. In his vision of things, death undermines all happiness and all permanence. Not something we encounter at the end of life only, it is indistinguishable from the actual world around us. Pervading all things, it often causes reality to become silent and barren for us, alien in its otherness. It may seem to be the prime force in existence, to dominate our lives.

But there are times when reality turns and reveals another face. Such occasions are described in a number of places in Bonnefoy's prose. The world turns slowly within the moment, leaving time and space behind. All that we had seemed to lose, through death, is returned to us. Nothingness is replaced by a fullness of being, and we begin to live the "vraie vie" which Rimbaud, one of Bonnefoy's masters, sought. Bonnefoy calls what happens...