"Likely Images"

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Likely Images

With Pelléas and Mélisande, Claude
Debussy turned to sleeping figures:
the garden was growing cold, its trees
pancake hatted, leaned Orient-
wards: but otherwise bare chested:
gesture absented melody,
gesture absented memory.
No mirrors. No history.
Voices alive to themselves alone.

Music can’t be itself
like a thought can be itself the gesture
in the glass shaped like itself: music
wakens the heart, skips or weakens the head.
He said: me too at times its charm rubbed raw:
its wayward grace wronged,
distracted, was made indistinct, pallid
as a boat or bar of soap
glistening where it rises to the surface
and floats sitting up.

His legs outstretch doll-like, while Chou-Chou
beside him on the lawn busies herself in prayer;
she is a child and it is understood prays for herself
alone and doesn't know someone takes this photo,
nor why Daddy’s eyes and heart and hands grow cold.
It would be simple now for him to pay his debts,
but in a short while he won’t have to.

— William Hunt

II est des nuits où je m'absente
Discrètement, secrètement...
Mon image seule est présente

— Jean-Roger Caussimon

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Dan Ward, “(Tell Me, Your Name) Is It Up In Lights”
Jean-Louis Murat, “Aimer” (Live)
Jean-Louis Murat, “Cours Dire Aux Hommes Faibles”
Jean-Louis Murat, “Charles & Léo: Trois titres”
Léo Ferré, “Avec le temps”
Mark Lanegan, Jack Bates, Jeff Schroeder & Shane Graham, “Disorder” (cover of Joy Division original)
”Nuits d'absence” de et par Jean-Roger Caussimon
”Nuits d’absence” Lyrics by Jean-Roger Caussimon; Music by Léo Ferré; Singing by Jean-Louis Murat