Beyond the airfield, near Chelles,
a farm and poplars gesture in the heat.
You dream, in your way, of Senegal,
and we sit by the hangar, all too aware
of the indignities of flightlessness.
We watch the bright planes
coming in, heading off,
as though this were all a game.
The day drones, and the wind picks up
as it did for that final mission
of Saint-Exupéry, a man versed
in aerial contingencies.
What a clean departure from the earth,
to disappear silently from tracking systems.
A routine flight from Corsica,
the airstrip at evening, the first lights,
his leather jacket open, hanging down.
Then the night, the Mediterranean,
the pilot in his craft, rising.