Archive > Vol. 7 no. 1
Jacques Roubaud
Identity
Translated from the French by Rosmarie Waldrop
What identity would be yours, that of your death?
you are, some would say, your grave and its inside,
the gravestone with your name
but that means only saying:
alive, you were this body dressed and undressed,
this body that contained your thought (or soul)
this body also bore this, your, name
identity does not last in the world except by this
analogy
you are, others would say, as you are in the memory,
if they remember, of those who had,
even if but a moment, known you
thus you would be, but parceled out, changeable, contradictory,
dependent, in intermittent light,
and once all those are dead you would no longer be.
and, surely, here again the idea of afterlife borrows
its very characteristics from the world that was your life
but for me, it is quite different:
each time I think of you, you cease to be.