Note nécrologique sur Antoine Le Sauteur, 1925–1996. Eloise sur Rhône, le 9 novembre 1996, est décédé Monsieur Antoine Le Sauteur, Maître de Cave, Veuf de Clara, née de Clicquot.

Cellar-master Antoine Le Sauteur fell in the year of
his death down the staircase and cracked his head
open on the stone floor next to the riddling rack
                                     he felt the sharp of the stone’s
infernal casting
                                     the angel came to lie in his body
effervescent as a flake of alabaster Antoine cupped
his hands over the place on his temple where the
angel had entered and found himself

In the insular stillness of his childhood
                                     I would have given her apple
blossoms (he said) and white moving clouds I would
have thought of a sudden clearing in the brown tree
light I would have made the sheep graze against the
distant sky voices waft from the pasture like pieces
of wind we would have picked small white and
yellow flowers and carried them in paper for a while