The Clock
Théophile Gautier

Translation by Mick Stern

The carriage halts at the church of Urrugne:
Harsh name, repugnant to rhyme's harmony,
But Despite that a very charming village,
Tilting oddly on the side of a hill.
The building's made out of big gray stones,
No buttresses, sculpted angels, friezes,
No ornamentation but a cross of iron
And a rustic clock with a wooden dial
Whose Roman numerals, washed by rain,
Have run down to a depth that no light touches.

By chance one may glimpse on this humble dial
The flaming words of Balthazar's walls,
The motto above damnation's door;
In letters black a sentence is written,
A grave and solemn Latin inscription
Where all who pass can read their destination:
"Each hour injures, and the last one kills!"

Life is nothing but struggle without cease,
Unequal combat with a hidden fighter,
Whom none of our blows can ever touch,
And in our hearts, like targets riddled,
The invisible archer's arrows tremble.
We are condemned to perish, you and I,
To be born is only to begin to die;
The infant was among angels yesterday,
But the worm nibbles at his swaddling today.

The face of the dial shows the battle cry
Of Death who lays the thousands low;
Death, the rude jouster and able defender
Of God's eternity against all pretenders.

On that large pale horse beheld by Saint John,
The Hours without pause round the dial run,
Like anonymous figures in Medieval song,
With helmets closed over their sombre faces
And iron-forged arms that slowly become
As black as the night, as white as the sun.

When the clock chimes, every Sister advances,
Wielding sharp iron needles like lances,
They prick without mercy at the passing crowd
Till the terrible day when the last one appears
Holding her hourglass and banner of fear;
We never expect her, but she's always been here.

She comes at you straight with a too-sure hand
And inflicts the supreme, the ultimate wound,
Then mounts on her horse and rides to deliver
Your body to nowhere, your soul to forever.

“Habitat & Habitus I” and "Habitat & Habitus II”
2023, hand-cut Yupo paper 34 x 45 x 10" (86 x 114 x 25.5 cm)

window curator Thomas Donahue

Cities architecture are forever changing as well as our personal disposition to adapt to our social worlds. Living in the city, I am fascinated by buildings’ geometric façades with occasionaly silhouetted scenes of their inhabitants. It is stories in a capsule of time and space and that’s what fires my imagination. What kind of connections a human makes in the maze of a city as New York? Are the encounters nearly random as a ball sent in a wild pinball machine? How can we isolate ourselves in such a beehive? or is it a dollhouse to play different scenarios and reinvent ourselves?