Abstract
In Francois Cheng's poetry, we can see a particular interest in the traces of the minute events of life. Instead of capturing the world in its totality through the magic of words, the poet has understood that poetic language has lost all the brilliance of the << Word >> that it still enjoyed in the symbolist era to become, not the end, but only the fleeting means of capturing the light that overflows it. Based on the words of contemporary poets such as Philippe Jaccottet and Yves Bonnefoy, but also those of the haiku poets, the article tries to highlight a commonly shared concern: to say a world in perpetual movement while keeping its irreducible part. The traces left behind, which can only be apprehended in the moment, are, in fact, the fragments of the palpitating presence of the original Void that is the Tao, sometimes materialized by the blanks in the poem.