The poems that make up Valente’s collection Leçons de Ténèbres borrow their titles from religious vocabulary as if to better convey their content, a profane meditation on the abundance of primitive life, from bacteria to the stars, a strange and fascinating litany on the cycle of intertwined life and death. The evocation of the Office of Good Friday thus takes us to the frontiers of the traditional narrative, as if to renew it better.