Le viaduc de Garabit se compose d'un tablier métallique long de 564,85 m reposant sur sept piles en fer puddlé de hauteur variable (jusqu'à 80 m pour les deux plus hautes). Les trois travées situées au-dessus de la partie la plus basse de la vallée sont soutenues par un arc d'une portée de 165 m et d'une hauteur de 52 m. La partie métallique est encadrée par deux viaducs d'accès nord et sud, en maçonnerie, de 46 m et 71 m respectivement. La hauteur au-dessus de l'étiage de la Truyère était de 122,5 m, cependant depuis la construction en 1959 du barrage de Grandval sur la Truyère, qui a entraîné la formation d'un lac de retenue de 28 km de long, le viaduc surplombe le lac de 95 m.

VII. You and I

Who am I?

A wounded man, badly bandaged,

a monster among angels or angel among monsters,

a box of questions shaken up and scattered on the floor,

A foot on the stairs, a voice on a wire,

a busy collection of thumbs that imitate fingers,

an enemy of yours. Your lover.

Text copyright © 1979 by Tennessee Williams

VI. The Ice-Blue Wind

Being expert on the zither

he gave concerts twice a winter ...

His fingers knew The Ice-Blue Wind

that single score and nothing more.

But what of that? It did suffice

to close him in a wall of ice,

Tinged with distance, always blue,

which somehow warmed him through and through.

Long, long after all had gone,

and in the hall crept winter dawn,

He would strike a final string,

take a bow and proudly shin

Up a column up to the roof,

in union with The Absolute.

V. Wolf's hour

Well, it's three A.M.

after an hour's sleep and a blond youth who declined to stay with me.

Wolf's hour of night is not well-spent alone.

Nevertheless there is this bit of comfort:

in my hands' curved remembrance there remains indelibly

the unclothed flesh of the youth who refused to stay longer,

and I could settle for less,

God knows if not unknowing.

III. Winter Smoke

Winter smoke is blue and bitter:

women comfort you in winter.

Scent of thyme is cool and tender:

girls are music to remember.

Men are made of rock and thunder:

threat of storm to labor under.

Cypress woods are demon-dark:

boys are fox-teeth in your heart.

II. Cruising

Noontime youths,

thighs and groins tight-jean-displayed,

loiter onto Union Square,

junkies flower-scattered there,

lost in dream, torso-bare,

young as you, old as I, voicing soundlessly a cry ...

Androgyne, mon amour,

shadows of you name a price

exorbitant for short lease.

What would you suggest I do,

wryly smile and turn away,

fox-teeth gnawing chest-bones through?

Even less would that be true

than, carnally, I was to you

many, many lives ago,

requiems of fallen snow.

Androgyne, mon amour,

cold withdrawal is no cure

for addiction grown so deep.

Now, finally, at cock's crow,

released in custody of sleep,

dark annealment, time-worn stones

far descending,

no light there, no sound there,

entering depths of thinning breath,

farther down more ancient stones,

halting not, drawn on until

Ever treacherous, ever fair,

at a table small and square,

not first light but last light shows ...

Androgyne, mon amour.

I. You and I

Who are you?

A surface warm to my fingers,

a solid form, an occupant of space,

a makeshift kind of enjoyment,

a pitiless being who runs away like water,

something left unfinished, out of inferior matter,

Something God thought of.

Nothing, sometimes everything,

something I cannot believe in,

a foolish argument, you, yourself, not I,

an enemy of mine. My lover.