This hand that holds the fire on “Terre à ciel” by Valérie Canat de Chizy

" In This hand that holds the fire , Tom Saja addresses the power of man to create and destroy. The first texts evoke the caveman discovering fire by rubbing two flints. That's the spark . Today's Anthropocene is contributing to the destruction of a planet that is warming to the point of burning. Here is the fire .

Thousands of centuries later

it's drizzling
on the world in ruins

it's raining
on the world on fire

Tom Saja brings the spark to life this hand that holds the fire , blowing on the embers of a budding love which ignites, leading us on a journey together from the asphalt of a city to the edge of a lake lost in the middle of nowhere. A life is being invented before our eyes in a thirst for emancipation and freedom, a return to nature and distance from all signs of civilization. The words are ardent, the breath of poetry makes this wild desire for a return to the primitive perceptible.

Leave the city, and all that water on the asphalt that evaporates without tasting the earth, burn the furniture on the sidewalk, rent a car, go on an adventure, fall in love at first sight with a remote corner in on the edge of a lake to the point of wanting to settle there. A lake of great beauty.

Your stomach swelled

a local newspaper said that the lake brought good luck to
the one who was born in her womb

we didn't have a country so we stayed

we settled in an estancia
blooming between the louvers of the trees
on the mountainside

no one around
the lake as your only neighbor

Build a nest, see the curve of the belly round, welcome a boy, as a shepherd had prophesied, arrange the world around this microcosm, while being aware of the ravages of capitalism, the scarcity of water, of the deadly attraction of the city, which sparkles with a thousand lights, and towards which the child who has become an adolescent will one day aspire to go.

Between breathtaking beauty, daily happiness, toasts of butter, coffee grounds and teaspoons , lucidity on the state of the world, the collection takes us on a trail where dust flies, where fire is the god of creation and destruction, where the living, which finds here its rightful place, is both preserved and threatened.

A very beautiful collection."

Valérie Canat de Chizy

Article published on Terre à ciel on October 14, 2022:
Read and approved (October 2022) by Valérie Canat de Chizy - Terre à ciel (terreaciel.net)

Buy the book online: This hand that holds the fire – Éditions Exopotamie