MON COEUR ROUGE
My red heart is not a stranger in a strange land. There are no deep-rooted customs and traditions for my red heart to interpret or understand. My red heart is not supplanted by ideas of sensation and reflection; my red heart is not lost. The eyes of my red heart see no shining young god named Helios, rising each morning at dawn from the ocean; they do not conceive the sun as a golden chariot, driven across the sky. My red heart can judge the nourishing from the poisonous, the concrete from the abstract. In my red heart there are no zigzagging colors, weaving in and out, no golden curtains, drawn against the bleak outside. My red heart does not merge algebra into simple French prose; my red heart knows the difference between ballistics and marksmanship, from botany and gardening. The mood of my red heart is not brown and somber; my red heart does not scream. The mouth of my red heart does not speak of ill-fated lovers, or of rain-soaked flowers picked by half-shy, half-fiery girls. My red heart is not a wayward child; it does not waste time with astrology or alchemy. My red heart is more captivated than captive; around my red heart there are no red velvet ribbons, no circling rosettes of soft red petals. My red heart does not neglect the intonation or the inflection; the language of my red heart is not camouflaged within the lines of a devastating epic. My red heart does not imply a deep love for mankind; it does not try to interpret, to persuade or to entertain. My red heart appreciates the immorality of atomic fission and the sword. My red heart knows there will be nothing left in the end.