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Anne-Lou Steininger 
Bernard Meares, Translator
Translated from the French by Bernard Meares
 I´m the Queen of the flies. My subjects die and slough me off. My subjects are born and fatten me up. My subjects transform me, transport me, and refine me. My subjects maintain me, enrich me, my subjects form my realm.... And I extend them, I immortalize them, crown them and seat them high in the blue empyrean upon thrones of dream. I become Queen in every fly.
I am the Queen of the flies, heroine of a story who trips in and out of a cascade of stories. I am not one but myriad, a thousand and one flies retold from mouth to mouth; I spread and propagate like plague or rabies, I am epidemic and inexhaustible. I am flysickness itself. I am the fly of the fly of the fly...I am the fly that one fly tells another, who passes it on, and goes and tells another fly, who in turn has a word with it.... And so on and so forth to any fly by night...I spread like a rumor, in an irresistible and ever expanding ripple. I´m the tale of a fly that´s going the rounds, the voice buzzing in your head, the noise humming in your blood. I´m flysickness itself. I´m carried by you, transmitted by you. You sustain me, through you I am transformed, never the same yet always identical. Each of you steals me, pillages me and copies me, usurping for yourselves my fatuous soul and far-off tale. I am flysickness itself. I am the source of all misunderstanding and metaphor, for every fly in the world tries to be like me; I am the source of all metamorphosis, for all of them end by changing into me! I am the sickness of flies. I am Queen of the flies; Listen to my voice speaking in you.I am the sickness of origins, The poison of the race, And I flow through your veins Queen and sovereign,Without form (I never rest; my nature pushes me endlessly towards new metamorphoses: "Nature" is obviously a misnomer unless you take the meaning of the word to be some naive metaphor, the way you might say "Hi there, old fruit" to some fellow, even though he is clearly neither old nor the fruit and branch off any old tree. But by then it is too late: the fruit tree is nevertheless there with its stored-up autumns, its cracking leaves and its hollow trunk--the old tree is still there before our eyes, still coming between us! And the fellow says facetiously: "As this old tree is here, let´s put it to use. Let´s see whether its twisted branches can give shade despite their age..." At this, he raises his arms to the skies and spins round laughing, to shake out the damned crows, forever pecking at his ears.A cloud of blue birds escape, fulminating, from the dead tree´s hollow trunk): "I see! I see!" shouts the guy, mad as a broom-seller, "once again the Fly-queen didn´t give a damn about me!" But I am already...what? a malaria dancer in the hollow of his blood, that´s what! I dance quadrilles while whistling : One-two! One-two-three-four! ...I lead a white ballet of quartan fevers dancing down his veins, I play the fiddle in his globules, its long-drawn sobs moanthrough his cells: one-two-one-two-three-four! ...with bursts of orchestras in flames, the percussion beating against his temples, kettledrums, cymbals, bells and whistles: I turn the drowsy substance of his languid swamp into a thunderous opera. Then, on river banks receding into the distance, he takes in the plangent vibrations of red velvet trees and groves poisoned by brass instruments, baroque seraphs twisting in flight from stomach cramps; cigars squashed in glistening sand. He sees the swollen glow at their tips refusing to go out, while women on fire coo and bill from balconies overweighted with frills and lace, their bellies eaten alive by blazing jewels given them by an admirer. He sees a hand, a slap, an explosion of green silk, a landscape of swamp and marsh jolting its ducks beneath the black lace of a palmate fan.The oscillation of the waves, prisoner of my boat thrown against a face whose grave eyes drag me down to the muddy ooze of the seabed. (Who is it?) His face crushes the breath out of me, with his saw teeth and their far too tinsel enamel. And my tremor gallops away. "You too agitated! You sweat like the sea !" "Sweat like the sea! Sweat! Sweat!" So I count lobsters: one lobster, two lobsters, three lobsters, four...(But they all look identical to one another.) ...I start over again. I concentrate. I sweat. I am all of a lather. One lobster, one lobster, one lobster, one. (I must have sunk for good.). I´m counting the same lobster twice over.I have to sink if my fever is to fall. The mud of the bottom, so I can slide: ooze, slime, softness. My paralysis must be wisdom!(and crevasses! With perpetual reincarnations.) I await my next victim, crouched at the foot of a precipice, a smooth-walled abyss with clearly defined edges where fleeting imagesor reflections--waft overhead in silence, whether idle fish or geisha clouds passing.... I am waiting--Or SHE is waiting for me--I am also her prey, after all.
We exchange our blood, teeth, and breath (How I love your perfumed odours when I melt in your fear! Your fever exalts the exquisite spice of your hatred. I suck your thoughts. I find the salt they contain. Thin, grainy and white. I taste your thoughts. But they melt too quickly, carrying off my tongue, and in silence they return to the fugitive images or reflections that hide me from your sight when you flow towards me, when you finally fall into my aquarium in a thin, grainy , white rain, and you deliquesce). Without form.
I make myself Queen in every fly . I crown myself Queen in every body where I´m fly enough , cast my skin, grainy smooth, tight and white--the egg-shell of the soul. And like the membrane in the egg binding white to yolk, I slip my initial obsession into the winding snailshell that is the difference in the ´e´ sound between ´egg´ and ´ego´, or ´I´ and ´ego.´
Egg and ego. And there I am! Another day another fly; I´ll be Me, I´ll be your Queen, with patience and vanity, for the space of one glorious summer long.
I and ego together again. I will grow with my prison, I will found my kingdom in it. I´ll be Me, unique and sovereign. I´ll grow wings, sprout legs under my belly, a proboscis and hairs. I´ll lead a model life, with magnificent orchards, Turkish delights, Camels, herds and gold, and open sports cars. I will give my name to a disease and a monument. I´ll be a gentleman poet, a boxing flyweight or pop star. I´ll be spoken of as far away as Timbuctoo. I will be respected, adulated, envied and ... forever unrivalled.
Egg and ego. One more time, one more life to face eternity with, patiently and with vanity. Conquer the void and light up time. One more ride on the merry-go-round, hanging from the mould-stained mane of a stubborn horse with scaly eyes. A day or two more, watching myself grow old in an exhausted body, with patience and vanity, growing old and wizened, with trembling wings and sagging feet, in a world drowned by eyes muddied with emotion; growing old and resigned, letting go of my dreams, worn out with waiting; finally abdicating the throne in my ephemeral and misty kingdom, my ego unloosed from my egg.
Flydeath is just dread, a brief tremor. Coquettishly shivering, I return into death as if it were a sumptuous and fragile cast-off skin. It is a festive winding sheet, an ancient vestment worn from king to king since the dawn of time for this silent ball, the most magnificent of their reign. It comes in by the sleeves and knots up at the back, pernickety, ever so slowly, and with bated breath, so that the fluttering gilding, faded silken ribbons, and lacework of dust are undisturbed by the slightest of sighs, all the exhausted gorgeousness of this sumptuous apparel. The rite can begin!
And I enter death, trembling slightly, sipping all at once the stupefaction of long sea voyages and bitter orgasm. Supreme and foolish instant of sovereignty. As I soar away, my flight is given emphasis by a violet scarf and a few palpitations in the fine-spun gold of my dress. I feel beautiful in it. Let me be stared at, let me be gazed at with the sincere and almost melancholy gravity of deep-seated longing. I am dying. Weep, my beloved flies.
This is the way I always die; in each and every fly there trembles the sovereign of a foundering kingdom. I am the ego and the egg, hobbling on the rounded mouths of a single vowel in two shapes. In one final cast of skin, I debauch myself, and again turn into the sound difference between short and long ´e.´ Then I fly down to Hell where my kingdom prospers. I make myself Queen in every fly, I damn myself. From each soul in torment I produce a flame; I meld egg and ego, water and fire, releasing flies from the country of the dead for another season on earth, for just one season, and I burn with phosphorus flame in a night studded with stars, the season of black loves or hour of the glow-worm.
I am Queen of the flies, hostage and sovereign.
My subjects hold me in thrall, my subjects imprison me; they keep me within them where they want me to reign over them as an absolute despot. They plead with me. "If it were not for you, your Majesty, where would we be? Long to reign over us! Govern us, rule. We´ll be your kingdom. We shall fatten you, transport you, enrich you... we shall love you. Be Queen in each and every one of us; and make our lives a meaningful story! May our murmurs become speech! And our desires be realized!"
And I always tell them: "Alas, my faithful flies, my beloved flies, my loving flies, my kingdom is immense, my power unbounded, and I would give you all I possess , but...I am very afraid it is merely a dream."
Then, beating my brow:
"It´s all happening in my head."
I would like to speak; whenever I open my mouth, my voice is covered by the sound of rain.
I am the Queen of the flies. My subjects exhaust me.
I have issued a decree: "Leave me alone! Abandon me!" 
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