Translation of Michel Houellebecq’s poem Chômage – Dennis Goodwin

August 5, 2025

Unemployment

 

I criss-cross the city where I expect nothing anymore
Least of all people always reinventing themselves 
In ways I know by heart. Elevated trains
Speed by like days I don’t speak to anyone

Oh! Afternoon after the unemployment office
How to make rent again? Fucking annoying
Living is impossible, and then you get old anyway
And nothing changes nothing; not summer, nor stuff

After a few months, benefits run out
And fall creeps back, slow like gangrene
Money is the only idea. The only law
I really am all alone. And then… and then…

People keep dancing their existential dance 
From which I’m sealed off as if in a condom
Then winter’s back. Their lives seem real
Maybe, just maybe, some part of the future awaits me