There is no happy love; I hum alone on the dock as I settle in. I arrived with my six-wheeled cart, my edifice of poems: trunks filled with micro-editions and fanzines, a painter's box with paper, envelopes, stamps in each drawer, and a large old suitcase containing the typewriter. Whenever I arrive with this pile of stuff at the port of Rosmeur, it always makes the same sound—wheels on cobblestones, bumps held. When I finally stop, in front of Les Filets Bleus, it feels like I’m about to start a performance. I avoid looking at the people sitting at tables outside. I take off my straps, my belongings, and I start setting up. The folding table, camping chairs, the beautiful yellow tablecloth, the typewriter. The wooden panels engraved with “live poem here.” I eventually sit down. Now, I’m facing the café customers, and nothing is happening. I’m typing this text on the typewriter. I wait.

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Today I come with a particular request for the port and the passersby: I come with the hope that something surprising will happen.

My hope is that the poems that arise are placed sincerely between delicacy and power. I have within me a desire for connection, whole, and almost impervious to my abyssal vulnerability. I need to perform this poetic action in the street. It’s so that a friend passing by can tell me affirmatively that it’s dangerous when love sprouts from frustration, so that the party-goers who haven’t slept all night can order poems for their dog, for their trumpet, or for themselves. With my back to the sea, which means being present for the people walking by on the promenade, I have set up my poetic office. I play with words, I feel useful, I hope to attract a few wealthy folks willing to share; I remain sensitive. I am open to the treasure it is to be here, just here, with a typewriter. This is my stance: present to the miracle, with sensitivity. I am willing to discuss troubles as much as nothing at all with others. I am here; I stay here: available, ready to offer, to receive. I smile, and people smile back.

Often, many do not dare to approach and remain a bit like on the doorstep, far enough away not to have to speak, but just stay there smiling.

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My presence at least makes them smile; I think and hope it awakens the desire to occupy public space differently. I maintain a posture of humility.

What I do is not necessary. It’s a proposal that requires courage on both sides.

It requires courage from those who really approach, who come to sit here, who reveal themselves, show their vulnerability, answer intimate and existential questions, clear and intimate, existential questions. Powerful, strong, incisive questions. The conversations that begin remain distant without losing emotion. Sometimes, after reading a poem, the person I’m addressing cries a little. This emotion touches me; sometimes, I cry with her. We cry because it’s just right, sometimes, and other times because we are together and manage to understand each other.

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It has already been five hours that I’ve been here. I remain and strengthen myself in a disposition of care, almost healing; I call upon generosity: mine and the generosity of the people. I need their looks and their curiosity. I hope they need softness, originality, creativity, and expression. I’ve seen the sun turn, almost even disappear. I like being here, tacitly knowing that they can ask me for a poem if they want. Now I am part of the scenery; I am no longer an event. I just place a desk in the street on Sunday: it stands, it’s simple, it’s clear. What interests me is the tipping point between performance and intimacy. How people gain trust. They are at ease when they have seen me here for a long time: it takes time, trust.

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Two women tell me that the poetry experience is refined, full of delicacy, that it truly feels good. I am happy. I feel useful, in my place, in a sincere and poetic relationship with others. I am in a mindset of sharing, transmission, and honest curiosity about others. Some people are intrigued. Some people are moved. Some don’t care, and others are almost scared. And I really like this panel of possibilities. Especially when I am so free, at the port, especially when I am exposed like this but in a serene space.

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It’s almost been seven hours since I’ve been here. I am now entirely alone and entirely surrounded. The people on the terraces have integrated me into the landscape. I have tamed their presence to be truly relaxed. People I’ve crossed paths with daily for two years can here reveal themselves to me very intensely, without filters. People I’ve never seen can narrate their depths to me.

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I want this moment of all-possibility to never end. I don’t want to leave.

I am here, with such simplicity and without asking for anything more, that I have almost become part of the sea.

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A woman comes and entrusts me with a poem she composed from a terrace:

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Poet siren in a pretty flower dress
She had washed up on the Port of Rosmeur
And she offered her voice to curious passersby
To hear her sweet song, to see themselves in her eyes
One has never done better than a seductive poem
To tell the lonely that someone loves them.

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With her dark glasses, I have never seen her eyes. I am moved by this little sounding text, by its spontaneity.

Without really expecting it, it’s this kind of sharing experience that I wanted to be surprised by upon arriving.

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The stones of the port start to speak.

The stones of the port began to talk
They told of wooden shoes, sardine fishermen
Drunkenness and sweat.
Unloading, boats, the wrinkles of grandmas
Caresses and fortuitous accidents.

Today, like a fortuitous accident
You came to tread the stones of the port
They gave you a piece of pleasure
And two signed poems.

Today is a signed poem.
A Sunday that silences the stones of the port
– a loving Sunday, a spring.

They sang a little nursery rhyme
the stones of the port
a cantata of soles
a whole day’s desire.

They sang this millennia-old nursery rhyme,
the one of the stone
that is a tale
(because it has seen everything).

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[poem I composed that day for a couple of young parents.]