Here in this city you don’t love
In which you’ve passed so many days
That counting makes you want to puke
Afraid of things unrecognized!

Afraid of everything you’ve seen!
Crossing the streets and then recrossing
The muddy ways, the ways of snow
Ways of the tongue-tied, sullen masks

Here in this city you don’t love
City you’ll never get out of
Because of all you still don’t know

Summerfuls of syllabic tasks
Dazed by your dead who died right here
Here in this city you don’t love

(Jacques Roubaud, p. 90 in The Form of the City Changes Faster, Alas, Than the Human Heart, trans. Keith & Rosmarie Waldrop.)