Jaccottet: All I have been able to do is to walk and go on walking

All I have been able to do is to walk and go on walking, remember, glimpse, forget, try again, rediscover, become absorbed. I have not bent down to inspect the ground like an entomologist or a geologist; I’ve merely passed by, open to impressions. I have seen those things which also pass — more quickly or, conversely, more slowly than human life. Occasionally, as if our movements had crossed — like the encounter of two glances that can create a flash of illumination and open up another world — I’ve thought I had glimpsed what I should have to call the still centre of the moving world. Too much said? Better to walk on . . .

• Philippe Jaccottet (translated by Mark Treharne), Landscapes with Absent Figures (Paysages avec Figures Absentes) (1997)