ROBERT DESNOS
TO THE DAWN
LANDSCAPE
RECLINING
TOMB
THE ANEMONE WHO REIGNED OVER THE SEA
CHANT FOR THE BEAUTIFUL SEASON
COUPLET OF THE WINE GLASS
DAWN
EARTH
FIVE O’ CLOCK
FROM THE VALLEY
ON THE ROAD
SEASONS
THE MIRROR AND THE WORLD
THE DREAM IN A CELLAR
THE TREE THAT DRINKS WINE
THIS HEART WHICH HATED WAR
TODAY I’VE WALKED
YES, LIKE THE WINDS MARKED BY THE ROSE
BOUQUET
ON THE FAR SHORE
THE WIND-UP BIRD
LAST POEM
TO THE DAWN
The morning collapses like a stack of plates
in thousands of shards of porcelain and of hours
and of bells
and cascades
right up to the zinc of this very poor bistro
where the stars persist in the night of the café
She isn’t poor, this one
with her evening dress soiled and muddied
but rich with realities of morning
with the intoxication of her blood
and with the perfume of her breath which no insomnia can spoil
rich with herself and all the mornings
past, present and future
rich with herself and the sleep which wins her
with sleep rigid like mahogany
with sleep and the morning of herself
and with all her life, which reckons itself
only by mornings, brilliant dawns
cascades, sleeps,
living nights
she is rich, that one
even if she holds out her hand
and must sleep in the crisp morning
in her muddied dress
on a deserted bed.
LANDSCAPE
I’d dreamed of love: dream still, but love’s no longer
as this twist of lilac-rose whose perfumes mingled
charge the forest air where somewhere burns
a flame marking paths which never turn.
I’d dreamed of love: love still, but love’s no more
this storm where lightning sparks its scattered pyres
above disordered castles, and before
it vanishes, blasts farewell on the square.
It is a flint-crack under my step in the night,
the word no dictionary dare translate,
foam on the sea, spray-risen cumulus.
Everything aged grows rigid, luminous,
unknottable cords, nameless avenues.
I stiffen like the landscape, deathly, taut.
RECLINING
On the right, the sky, on the left, the sea.
And before my eyes, the grass and its flowers.
A cloud, on its way, follows its vertical path
parallel to the horizon’s plumb-level,
parallel to the horseman.
The horse runs towards the immense fall
as the other rises, interminably.
How simple and strange everything is!
Lying on my left
I lose interest in the landscape
and think only of very vague things
very vague and very happy
like the weary look which one allows wander
through the beautiful afternoon of summer
from here, from there,
in the delirium of the pointless.
TOMB
By dint of loving, I have lost myself in the ocean. And what an ocean!
A tempest of laughter and tears.
If you board a boat, take care to look at the figure on the prow which will fix you with an eye eaten away by the swell and the salt water.
But what am I saying? The shows of love scarcely interest me. I no longer want to be anything but a sail carried by the monsoon wind towards the unknown continents where I will find only one person. She for whom you will have a ready-made name.
I undress as does an explorer lost on an island and I remain motionless like a figure on a prow.
Hail to you, wide wind, and you, desert, and you, forgetfulness.
I will be forgotten. Some day, one will not know my name, but I will know theirs. One evening, covered in glory and rich, I will return, will knock on their door, completely naked, but they will not answer me, having opened the door, when I appear to their eyes.
I have won, at least, the sense of perpetuity. Not those, ridiculous, the concessions of the cemetery.
I wish in vain for the appearance of the guillotine, but I can only offer to the bloodthirsty mob my desire for suicide.
Revolution! You will shine only after my death, on the immense square of white marble which will cover my huge corpse.
France is a nest of wasps, Europe a rotten field, and the world a peninsula of my consciousness.
But happily there remain to me the stars, and the awareness of my moral grandeur opposed to the thousand obstacles which the world supplies for my love.
THE ANEMONE WHO REIGNED OVER THE SEA
The anemone who reigned over the sea
still reigns, that’s understood
but so little she’s lost
she’s lost at the bottom of the seas
she remembers her diamonds
suspended in a rainbow
suspended in the pink
and the oysters yawn around her
to offer her pearls
but the anemone who reigned over the sea
hardly reigns anymore, and the iron anchor
has bitten her cruelly and she will shortly die.
CHANT FOR THE BEAUTIFUL SEASON
Nothing anymore comes closer to inspiration
than the drunkenness of a spring morning,
Than the desire for a woman.
No longer to be oneself, to be everyone.
To place one’s feet on the earth with agility.
To savour the air we breathe.
I sing this evening not about what we must fight
but what we must defend.
The pleasures of life.
The wine we drink with our friends.
Love.
A fire in winter.
The river cool in summer.
The bread and meat of each meal.
The refrain one’s sings on a walk.
The bed where one sleeps.
The sleep, without dream or twist, without the anguish
of tomorrow
Spare time.
The freedom of a changing sky.
The feeling of dignity and many other things
which one refuses to hand over to others.
I love and sing the blossoming spring.
I love and sing summer with its fruits.
I love and sing the joy of living.
I love and sing the springtime.
I love and sing summer, the season I was born.
COUPLET OF THE WINE GLASS
When the train leaves don’t wave your hand,
not your handkerchief, nor your umbrella
but fill a glass of wine
and throw at the train whose slatted sides sing,
the long flame of wine,
the bloody flame of the wine like your tongue
and share with it
the palace and the bed
of your lips and your mouth.
DAWN
The greasy night, leaning at the edge of its chasms,,
contemplates the gardens of the disappearing day.
More briefly than the light, on the blade of the crime,
they have flourished. Already fades the portrait
of a world which death harasses and pushes.
How they blaze, the lighthouses, the pyres,
the far-off suns, the preordained comets!
And yet only, near the bed and its dying burden,
nightlights, trembling in the current of the air
from those gates open to earth and immensity.
all is night, all is dead, all is alone, but what does it matter
if one has for an instant, under the summer sun,
the illusion of love and abundance.
Come, misunderstood and deceiving night, and tell us
if fevered kisses, hollow studies
are wiser here than the kneeling prayer of the coward and the sickly.
The greasy night has fallen in familiar drops
where the day will follow in a docile fall
for already it is lifting on the hills its naked body.
It bathes in the spring, it crosses the valley,
its powerful reflection penetrates the sea.
The procession of sounds are taking flight
to sing the return of the beautiful adolescent.
Put out the fires, disperse the ashes,
the day is ready to be lived, the hour to be plucked.
EARTH
One day after another,
wave after wave.
Where do you go? Where do you all go?
Earth murdered by so many errant men!
Earth enriched by the corpses of so many men.
But the earth is us,
we are not on it
but forever in it.
FIVE O’ CLOCK
At five in the morning on a new and empty street
I hear the sound of a car moving off.
A fire alarm has its glass broken and the debris
of glass gleams in the gutter.
On the cobbles is a pool of blood and a wisp of smoke dissolves in the air.
Hey there! Hey there! Tell me what’s happened.
Waken up! I want to know what’s going on.
Tell me about these men’s adventures.
FROM THE VALLEY
At the detour of the footpath in the mountain
the carcase of a mule that died last year
under the too-heavy load it bore
has finally whitened in the leaden sun.
The scent of thyme and the hum of insects
fill the air intoxicates of the traveller
who feels time hesitate as he follows his route
and the world vacillate in the heat.
In the valley, at the bottom of the steep slopes,
mules are trotting past
with the noise of their little bells and their shoes.
In a farmyard men are surrounding
a ewe which has just given birth; one lifts
to the sky a lamb astonished by life.
ON THE ROAD
Sometimes on the road one comes across vines
whose ripe grapes are near at hand -
They’re good! And let’s leave for who knows where tomorrow?
for the leaf resembles the hand by its lines.
But let’s cherish the vines where one reads the sacred
signs of youth and human desires,
the wine is drunk, let’s leave, let’s retake the path
which is born with the song of the cock and dies with the swan’s.
There remains however the imprint of our glasses
on the ironed tablecloth. At the hands of the washerwoman
the satin will soon part in the flow of water.
So go the oaths; sweet girl who sings,
we’ll raise a toast to the honour of rogues.
Keep filling our glasses to the end of the cask.
SEASONS
The day is in its place and flows at the far end of time
unless the living being rises across spaces
stacked in the memory and relieving
the brain and the heart of the burden of stubborn remembrances.
Beings, powerful beings, your very name passes,
to be and have been, pastimes and springtime,
it goes, it’s gone like an endless water
without scars, without witnesses, without ponds.
Seasons, you cherish at least the grain of wheat
which must moan until the days of thaw; and the key
to open for departure the carters’ gates.
The stars in the sky by you are gathered
the years soon move to an end, and the weighed-down steps
hobble on the paths leading back to the frontiers.
THE MIRROR AND THE WORLD
Each day with its keen teeth
time tears little by little the silvering
of this mirror and restores
to space a new plunder.
Leprosy marks the face
and masks a lateness which stretches out
weak, weak from recognising itself
each evening and morning.
The landscape appearing
with its sky and distance
frees a reflection and invites
Narcissus to live the uncertain,
the limpid, the beautiful journey
between evening and morning.
THE DREAM IN A CELLAR
All the bottles were broken in this cellar
so the smell of wine drunk by the sand rose
like and October mist above the old quays
and the saltpetre walls were yellow with lava.
The spider spinning her web balanced
her pig-like belly swollen by the fumes
in the manner of a frigate at the hour when the sea
laps and bursts in the shade with the noise of an abscess.
Beautiful frigate with the fabulous name of a lover
your siren at the prow with her well-combed hair
would have handed you over to the spiders’ fangs
you suddenly in the web; and numerous
your sails which swell with tiny North winds
pushing you, white, to the assaults of twilights
black as a sea disturbed, streaking
the foam which coils itself in the neck of the whirlwind,
beautiful frigate, white as the shirt
a washerwoman forgot, left in a field
on a drying line on a starless night,
beautiful frigate sailing to marvellous promises.
For no other noise is heard in this dungeon
than the water crying within the sonorous movements
and the sound of a latecomer’s steps rising still
who dreams of the sweetnesses of a warm bed
THE TREE THAT DRINKS WINE
The tree that drinks wine
wants us to sleep in its shade
like the stag and the rabbit
fed on cucumber and thyme
The tree which drinks wine
is a well-known pal
good for morning and evening
and all our cavalcade days
The tree which drinks wine
told us this morning
no need to tell the future
not every day is Tuesday
The tree that drinks wine
pours it to the entire earth
it’s not stupid it’s crafty
and its shadow will be the last
And its shadow will be the last
on the earth if it’s still there
and on the earth and the sea
the second of the final dawn.
THIS HEART WHICH HATED WAR
This heart which hated war, see how it beats
for combat and battle!
This heart which only beat to the rhythm of the seas,
those of the seasons, to those of the hours of day and night,
How it swells and sends through the veins a blood
burning with saltpetre and hatred
And brings such a noise to the brain that the eardrums
whistle
And it’s impossible that this noise will not pour out into the town
and the country
As the sound of a bell calls to riot and combat.
Listen, I hear what is coming back to me in its echoes.
But no, it is the sound of other hearts, millions of other hearts
beating like mine across France.
They beat, all these hearts, with the same rhythm,
the same need
Their sound is that of the sea assaulting the cliffs
And all that blood carries to millions of brains
the same word of command:
Rise against Hitler and death to his partisans!
Nevertheless this heart hated war and beat
to the rhythm of the seasons,
But a single word: Liberty was enough to waken
the old angers
And millions of Frenchmen prepare themselves in the shadows
for the need which the coming dawn will impose on them.
For these hearts which hated war were beating for freedom
with the same rhythm as the seasons and the seas,
as day and night.
TODAY I’VE WALKED
Today I’ve walked with my friend,
even though he’s dead,
I have walked with my friend.
How lovely they were, the trees in flower,
the chestnut blossoms that rained the day he died.
With my friend I have walked.
Now I know the dead a little better,
I’ve seen plenty of undertakers’ assistants
but I don’t go too close to them.
Which is why all day today
I’ve walked with my friend.
He found me grown a little older,
slightly aged, but he told me
‘You too will come where I am,
some Saturday or Sunday’:
I looked at the trees in flower,
at the river passing under the bridge
and suddenly I saw I was alone.
And so I came back among the living.
YES, LIKE THE WINDS
MARKED BY THE ROSE
Yes, like the winds marked by the rose
there is a sense of space and time,
if there is one there are a thousand or more
so many that they can’t all be felt.
For who of us hasn’t imagined or sensed
shadows wandering outside geometries,
universes escaping from our senses?
At the meeting points of oblique roads
we hear it fading, the sound of a horn,
always reborn, always identical.
This vision of the sky and the rose,
it becomes absorbed and dissolves in the air
like the sounds which make our flesh tremble
or the glimmers under our closed eyelids.
We collide with other universes
without feeling, seeing or hearing them,
in the hollow summer, the peaks of winter
other seasons fall on us in ashes.
While with the winds marked by the rose
the door slams and the flagpole creaks
the sail fills and for no visible reason
an absurd presence imposes itself on us,
material, restless and indifferent.
BOUQUET
Three thoughts three poppies three worries
three worries three roses three carnations
the three roses for my love
the three carnations for my friend
the three poppies for the little girl so sad
the three thoughts for my pal
the three worries for myself.
ON THE FAR SHORE
The blind man stretched his hand out to the queen
the queen gave to him her mouth
miracles, you wilt along my path!
My friends are muzzled
what use is it to speak the language of the eyes and hands
I’m compiling a dictionary of an unknown language
its alphabet like the reverberations along the avenue
I am the slave of certain distinguished letters
letters of hate I’ve written you all
it was in August
I was wondering if I was capable of love or hate
my fountain pen wrote at my dictation
whether it willed or not
in a women’s penal colony in the tropics
it’s there my beloved must be found
the blade makes a nick in her large neck
the trees shed and become hands
when I have neither feet nor hands
I’ll still have wings
O crimes what difference is there between you
and the deaths of roses?
One day I’ll be a surprising lover
women will all love me
but I’ve such fear of not understanding.
THE WIND-UP BIRD
The bird with the scorched head
which sang at night
which woke the child
which lost its feathers in the inkwell
The bird with its feet in 7 places
which broke the dishes
which ruined the hats
which came back from Suresnes
The bird the wind-up bird
was lost its key
its key of fields
its vault key
Now you know why it doesn’t sing anymore
LAST POEM
I have so fiercely dreamed
of you, so walked, so spoken,
so loved your shadow that nothing
of you remains, not the least token
and nothing is left to me but to be
shadow among shadow, the hundredth
part: to be the shadow that will fasten
to your steps in the sun.
JEAN TARDIEU
A WOMAN A BIRD
FLOWERS AND ABYSS
THE FALSE SAILOR
EVEN THOUGH
THE LITTLE OPTIMIST
MIDDAY
UNKNOWN JUSTICE
PETRIFIED DAYS
THE MASK
PRESENCE
APARTMENTS
THE SOUND OF THE SEA
THE SUFFOCATED GODS
CHRONICLE
CROSSROADS OF NIGHTMARES
DAYS
THE TOWN AT THE FOOT OF SPACE
EPITAPH
HELL AT HOME
PERILS OF MEMORY
HOLDERLIN’S GRAVE
WHEN THE NIGHT OF MY HEART
THE CHILD-EXECUTIONER
I DON’T EXPECT
MEMENTO MORI
NATURE
IS IT A BEAST?
NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHER
ON THE EARTH WHERE THE DAYS MERGE
DILEMMA
THE IMMOBILE WORLD
TIME GONE
WE WILL GO NO FURTHER
ISLE DE FRANCE
A WOMAN A BIRD
The great bird which flies above the plain
with the same rhythm as the hollows and the woods
we have watched a long time glide in an absolute sky
which was neither day nor night.
A stork? An eagle? Everything together,
the silent voice of the barn-owl
and this royal wingspan
of a god which made itself a bird…
Our eyes turned about an instant
suddenly saw the marvel descend
it was the daughter of dawn and desire
an angel in our furrow fallen with a body
more feminine than love itself and long, long
placing her feet scarcely on the soil for the wind of her wings
lifted her again. At last the smooth and white plumage
on this woman of crystal folded itself back. She seemed not to see us
nor to be surprised that a lake
spread out before her steps … already
she dived smiling to herself
happy to remember the previous elements
and a time without limit … she wove in that transparent water
the signs of an unknown language
then, shaking herself, surrounded by pearls
newly brilliant and icy
she stamped the ground with her feet … so I see her still
leaning slightly forward
and already almost detached
just as we have seen her rise and disappear into the blue
From that time I have known
through what subtle will and secret movements
we can fly when all else sleeps.
FLOWERS AND ABYSS
I
Under the flowers known to me there is no plain
but the black milk of the unknown abyss;
in my bitter dream I return them to the night,
they descend, they extinguish themselves slowly.
II
A house advances slowly
at the flower-covered side of the abyss
its smoke already turns blue …
Ah! That it be saved
by words, before its fall
and that it fall into the spirit
without noise, without suffering!
III
Indolent maid
who passes close to the flowers
hear the abyss thunder!
The lightning of origins
illuminates the colours.
Silence, lightning flash, future,
hair glowing,
I do not know what to do
with such a splendour.
IV
Two hands which have lost the track of a face
approach, scenting the shadow in search
of a form once human. But the mask
is filled by the abyss.
The terrified hands withdraw
and take with them the flowers.
V
Trees, to win the terrible favours of the abyss
we will ascend on the inside as far as our flowers.
So the wind, so the autumn, so
our accomplishment will be
this fall, light, happy, desolate.
VI
Gnawed by a fringe of shadow and gold
flowers red, black, violet,
purer than yourself, there
where the future hesitates
as the spirit at the centre of sleep is roused,
as the silence in the hollow of the storm
or liberty in the secrets of its acts
when the word has become so vast
that there is but to meet,
a great winged space in the air
so, O flowers in yourselves in its turn
the abyss huddles.
VII
If the look grows if it is the same abyss
it can contain and preserve all,
but it is not without fear that it welcomes
this flower with heavy lashes
greater than the sea.
VIII
The whitest a long time
have with sorrow
retained the light of evening,
the courageous ones!
Soon they will go to burn
in the abyss of the sun.
THE FALSE SAILOR
To deliver my life
from immobility
I have made great efforts –
wrapped in my rigging
in my fallen sails
I will gain the harbour
I have never left.
Image of myself
bird, cruel form
which parts and which returns
in the odour of the sea
each turn of your wing
overpowers me with bonds.
Wrapped in my rigging
in my fallen sails
I will gain the harbour
I have never left.
EVEN THOUGH
Even though I saw with my own eyes
the ancestors painted on the pictures
descend from their frame and walk in the thickness of the world
Even though I saw with my own eyes
the roads of the earth rise up into the sky
gracious and tilted over like fountains
Even though I heard the sun
(what, it? Yes the sun the sun)
speak to me in a lowered voice call me by my name
Even though I took the stature
and the silence and the heaviness of a house
Even though I had found the key
to the great tunnel which traverses the globe
and I began the slow slide along its walls
Even though I saw with my own eyes
the Other Side of things swarm
even though even though even though
I would always believe in the sacred reality
which parting from our hands sinks into the night
THE LITTLE OPTIMIST
From morning I have watched,
have watched from the window;
have seen the children pass.
An hour later they were grown,
another hour, ancient, trembling.
How quickly they aged, I thought!
And I who grow young each instant!
MIDDAY
As in the past in my too dear shadows
today under the waters of the sun
I dive … what is this laughter
which calls me, what is that savour of air
and that blue marbled with stains of brightness
in the fishermen’s harbour? Do not answer anymore
if I question! It is “thus”, it is for talking, there is no
answer to the why of pleasure
nor anymore to that of anguish, for I know
and I hear and I hear …
Ah! That further off the wind
tilts at the side of the gulf the red wind of a sailing ship
that the milk of the light, feeble surface,
covers the depths of the night, that death
be nearer than everywhere in the furnaces of midday,
I can’t forget, but my life
is just like this day: the inferno under the smile,
one yielding nothing to the other in Truth
and my eyes and my body
consumed under the sky without dreams
are made in order to know you and be like you,
lightning flash of that which moves
across my eyelids
trees reddened by fire
reflections on the side of the small boats
stone burning in one’s hands.
UNKNOWN JUSTICE
Still it echoes in the other room,
that deep voice beyond the screen,
it judges, condemns and then pardons
a crime foreign to deep reasoning.
I don’t know if I’m the one who’s guilty,
I don’t know if the voice bears a name.
PETRIFIED DAYS
The bandaged eyes the trembling hands
deceived by the sound of my steps
which carry everywhere my silence
losing the tracks of my days if I wait for or pass myself
always I find myself again there
as the stone under the sky.
Through the night and through the sun
condemned without proof and without fault
to the walls of my narrow space
I turn to the bottom of my sleep
desolate as hope
innocent like remorse.
A man who pretends to grow old
imprisoned in his infancy
the future shines precisely
we will remember it again
the soil trembles at the same place,
time rises like the sea.
THE MASK
An imaginary life
is laid on all the towns.
Everywhere false lights
are painted on the eyelids
of tight-shut windows
The pale gleaming sun
is a mere plaster on the stones.
The real town is in the night.
PRESENCE
We search at the edge of a cloudy water
for the bursting forth of a secret sun.
The assuaged desires are cast to the stumps
here and there under the uncertain day.
Maybe it’s a desk, or a meadow
littered with debris or reliefs, or yet
an armchair covered with frightful embroideries?
In any case someone whistles
and another answers.
A fine ray flees from sun to ceiling.
It’s the moment to laugh and break life
under the tapping of our heels.
APARTMENTS
That which one hears through the ceilings,
which comes from far-below floors,
neither raises nor lowers its pitch.
Gravely the syllables drone
the hat falls on the mouth which sang,
on the water which runs in the kitchens,
all that breaks free and re-echoes.
Let us crouch down in these woollen caves,
envelop our laughter and cries
and not be dragged by the day
to the floor of a jittery world.
THE SOUND OF THE SEA
The spirit carried toward the sound of the sea
which I cannot hear
or toward that space forbidden to stars
whose memory I hold
I meet the voice the warmth
the scent of surprising trees
I embrace a mysterious body
I grasp the hands of friends.
THE SUFFOCATED GODS
The opacity of the walls, silence
fallen onto obscure clamours,
time where patience sinks,
leaden sun on sadness
and the twilights of oneself,
iron forms, masks of fire,
rocks shut again on the gods
dripping with rain and weeping,
open, open to those who love them,
open your gates which are killing me!
CHRONICLE
... And as he refused to advance
he was hit on the threshold
by a hail of crossfire. Others,
for having tried to flee,
fell beyond the hills. Still others,
pulled out of bed at daybreak
were locked in barns
and the crackle of the fire choked their cries.
In the town one died for having talked,
others for having kept silent
and the dawn broke on a calcined land,
the rain and the smoke and the debris
having erased the frontiers,
the roots of all evil.
However,
on the other side of the sea,
while new massacres
smouldered slowly under the ancestral ash,
young girls were singing in the churches.
CROSSROADS OF NIGHTMARES
People pursued by their dreams,
in deep sleep, in full terror, gather
on some vague terrain open to the flow
of the sewers, blacker than night.
‘I was running’ says one, ‘and a dog bit me
but the woman beside me was already dying;
a horse brought me happiness awaited me…’
The other groans: ‘I left my body
I changed `the mansion of my face
I didn’t know who I was,
moreover when I saw this ring on my finger,
I burst into tears without knowing why.’
And all half-naked laughing
to the point of breathlessness
form up further on a group shivering
on having discovered a treasure
on the cobblestones where nothing shines
but a shard of a bottle
emerald and sapphire in the blood of the stream.
Thus they go, one and the other
urged on by the breath of a dream
which carries them, drifting.
DAYS
In a dark town carried along by time
(each house in advance collapses with the passing days)
I returned, I left with all my shadows.
A thousand suns ascended as at the bottom of a river,
a thousand others descended, colouring the high walls;
I pursued hands on the edge of the balconies;
forms paled (the light is on them)
or fell into memory (the rays have turned.)
The days, the days... who sighs and who calls me,
for which feast or which entreaty or which pardon?
THE TOWN AT THE FOOT OF SPACE
This little piece of space is slapped by the spirit
as the sky is by the swallow
or the paved emptiness by the fragile noise
of a bike seen by people with gloomy
eyebrows, their arms loaded with sad parcels.
Space, such a thirst! With our steps
so slowly going along the narrow tracks
under the houses where there are no smiles.
Time runs past, but the milestone is always there!
O source always present on the roofs
drunk upside down by fevered eyes,
force always stronger by its absence,
space, join with time to deliver
our bodies tortured by hope!
Too little space and too much time. O move away,
space, boat crushed in this port,
lift the tombstone of these dead,
rip your ropes of smoke, leave in the night,
make of every window a blessed
opening on the freedom of the infinite!
EPITAPH
To break the net of day and seasons,
to know what it was, that unknown voice,
on the bridge of the sun aloof from my life
I have stopped.
And the rivers have fled,
the shadows recognised,
space, white eyes, I listen I speak again
I remember everything that has ever been.
HELL AT HOME
In the secrecy of a darkened corridor
at the bottom of an uncertain mirror
a man comes across his image.
Such he sees, such he wants to be,
proud, joyous, triumphant
and above all young, like a god!
But the image fades and is lost
in the noise of groaning pipes
and suddenly his heart fails:
in the glass (which shakes a little
with each passing car)
appears a new occupant
slowly, slowly freeing himself
a kind of humpbacked dog
who toward the sky squared by the courtyard
shrieks at death and casts a look full of tears.
THE PERILS OF MEMORY
They gather together often, to struggle
against those most tenacious memories.
Each takes his place on an armchair
and takes his turn with the story.
First appears the accident
then love, then sordid regrets,
finally the lacklustre hopes.
All those pictures are painted
on the wall between flowers on the paper.
They think thus to accustom themselves
to the poisons their memory carries;
I though, behind the door
see the present flee with its secrets.
HOLDERLIN’S GRAVE
The day, the day drones with confused reproaches
the night grumbles and complains
it moans without saying why
The rising sun
speaks to us like a father
but we don’t listen to his counsels
Space is inhabited by innumerable fires
which address us with incomprehensible signals
and time this long while
harries our memory
like a face impossible to find again.
Alone after long days of walking
I often go on foot to this theatre of shades
and before the deserted stage
I keep vigil with the tightened heart
calling without echo
those great actors who after a hundred thousand years
reign over our ingratitude
and speak without making themselves heard.
Forest, why still be silent?
Waken up and walk! Sky,
why close your eyes in broad daylight?
Mixed with the golden chains of the sun
are the treasures hidden by your night! Return
near to us, distant spaces! May our times
be mingled, may all,
past, present, future, together be given
to the indomitable spirit which hopes for you
and waits for you!...
And if, from this tumult
comes a voice, unique, gently
dominating the thunder, and that Smile
stronger than the mortal combat of the elements,
may we be finally instructed
in that unalterable peace
which has been sown in the spirit of man
since the first day!
But nothing comes by way of response
but the sound of his heart, and always the silence of the world
appears alone to announce the word and always,
in us, immense voices go, growing fainter,
with the memory of the Promise,
like a storm moving slowly away!
WHEN THE NIGHT OF MY HEART
When the night of my heart descends into my hands
and from my hands into the water which bathes everything:
having plunged there I rise again naked
in every image:
a word for each leaf a gesture for each shade
‘It is I who hears you it is I who knows you
and it is I who changes you.’
THE CHILD-EXECUTIONER
The terrified child covers his eyes with his arms,
but the Man descends, growing bigger with every step.
The child calls for help
from earth and heaven. But the Man
with each step grown greater and heavier
cries: ‘You have seen what you shouldn’t have,
you’re going to die!’ And his fist is raised, his eyes blazing.
The child makes a last effort
to break away from this world
and just as the executioner is about to reach him
he becomes the smoke from a brush fire
and is loosed by the wind.
And the vagabond on the cold grass sways,
shaken by sobs.
I DON’T EXPECT
I don’t expect a god purer than this same day:
it rises I see it my life is in its hands:
the earth which stretches under the trees I love
prolongs in the sky the rivers the roads...
I go I have a hundred thousand years for this sweet journey.
MEMENTO MORI
Beside the gilded panelling of the offices
there the corridors thread in the endless mirrors,
each door, each pillar
hides a killer who yawns, bored:
time is long and surety is thin.
Nevertheless, outside in the shadow of furniture
as in a gate, sheltering from rain
a woman stands, gleaming like a pane,
watches with empty eyes.
Hello!.. Yes, it’s me... It’s time!..
Listen... Where are you?..Where are you?..
Who’s speaking?.. Who’s there?.. I can’t hear!..
The sea had rolled along the avenues:
tomorrow, sand under the tread of the caravans.
And the archaeologist among the rocks
will confuse our centuries and our days
and the conch of a rusted phone
will deliver him no secret
of the humming of our words.
NATURE
It is a bird which approaches, weeping
it is a cloud which speaks while dreaming
a rock rolls to mark time
a reed admires itself in the glass of a pond
the trees of the forest
are there, like people, like people.
All these make a waiting crowd,
but man – gone, gone, gone...
IS IT A BEAST?
Is it a man or a beast? He runs,
terrified, haggard, between the briars,
shoes heavy, face and hands
bleeding. Bells clang in his head
and the taste of death is in his mouth.
Where to go? To the left? The branches crackle under boots.
To the right? the dogs snarl. And, before him,
bullets make the puddles spurt.
Then he charges, haphazardly. The open ground,
white under the sun, appears. Alas, no shade!
Not a ditch, not a tree, not the least
shelter into which he can fall before the executioners come!
Already the baying, more numerous and nearer,
reverberates
and suddenly, there, there in the tall grass,
one of the pursuers rises and fires! Another
a little further off, then two, then ten, then a hundred.
The horizon swarms and gleams
with helmets, rifles, harnesses,
the light of machine guns. The man falls,
leaps up again, manages a few paces, totters,
ragged in a dust of dark blood
and collapses, still at last, while from the side,
a reedy bugle rasps.
A thousand men for the death of only one? Was it a dream?
Was it not rather,
in a valley touched by the autumn sun,
the creaking of a cart,
the gleam of light on apples
and the rags of a scarecrow
shaken by the peaceful wind?...
NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHER
What to say, what to think? The day
by its insistence on appearing,
confess it, confess it,
exhausts its best friends.
The night, on the other hand, is sly,
blending in at every instant,
it beats on our eyelids
it creeps around objects:
worrying, worrying!
As for that nameless thing
which is neither night nor day,
lower your voice I advise you;
better not to speak of it here!
ON THE EARTH WHERE THE DAYS MERGE
On the earth where the days merge,
trembling with having seen again a flower,
I crush the blood from my heart
in the hard walls of this world.
I abandon to the night its delights
near the edges glimpsed through closed eyes;
the sand is sown with poppies
to master time as it slips past.
Till tomorrow, tender day, till tomorrow!
stay young sleeping under the shore
I carry the flame still lit
in the shelter of my faithful hands.
A stubborn and avaricious traveller,
facing the approaching flood,
I seek the country of rocks
the last captive growls.
DILEMMA
I’ve seen barriers
I’ve collided with them
it was pure spirit.
I’ve seen leeks
I’ve eaten them
it was nature.
No further!
Always barriers
always leeks!
Ah! If I could
leave the leeks
behind the barriers
the key under the gate
and set off somewhere else
to speak of other things!
THE IMMOBILE WORLD
Pits of twilight
deaf fountain
lake without brightness
thick presence
feeble beating
there is the instant
nothing no one
a heavy shadow
and its silence
I wait centuries
nothing echoes
nothing appears
on this tomb
space moves
it’s my thought
for no look
for no ear
the truth.
TIME GONE
The hour the days the years which consume us,
that time is no more, we have passed it
we will go no more on the sonorous riverbanks;
the white foam and the hair of horses
under the sky fixed in piled heaps
like bones which a lone crow decorates
(a black icicle, remnant of a breath
shines sleeping all around its nostrils)
such are the designs which we have traced.
We will go no more along the waters
we will go no more to defy the clouds,
we lamenting the death of the seasons
we will have no more clamours nor tears…
We will be there as are all other things
the standing tree which floats in its own shadow
the white sun which turns around us,
the peace of the day, its invincible arms.
We will be there calm and profitable
without a sigh in our rows of reeds
praising the sun because it gathers us together
praising the sky because it resembles us
because it is our deep silence
because it sleeps in our weakness
because it gleams in our verity
and our eyes serene once more gaze
as another immobile time comes up.
WE WILL GO NO FURTHER
One (who passed us) tapped us on the shoulders
‘Let’s run there!’.. ‘But where?’… ‘I don’t know!’
He who spoke to us was shaking our shoulders.
An identical wind tilted towards the horizon
our faces ravaged by glimmers of blood.
We shrieked appeals and cries of rage
which prowled in the night like severed hands.
But why those fragments on the old carriages?
Because we were from the same family.
And why such love and why such hate?
Because we were on a desert island.
ISLE DE FRANCE
I wandered beside your face
poplars canals and palaces
across the roofs the clouds
you spoke low-voiced I listened
I wandered beside your shores
you but a smile, a dream
your rocks your hands your thunderstorms
a dream to me in the sun
And you, you passed through paintings
their shadow-people loved you
set tables, tender faces
in the corner a dagger gleamed
cockades cannons drums
what Night came I was ready
before me stretched on velvet
harvest meadow forest
I fell asleep to your murmur
people and beasts were singing
delirium of the measure
death silence peace.
ROBERT DESNOS
TO THE DAWN
LANDSCAPE
RECLINING
TOMB
THE ANEMONE WHO REIGNED OVER THE SEA
CHANT FOR THE BEAUTIFUL SEASON
COUPLET OF THE WINE GLASS
DAWN
EARTH
FIVE O’ CLOCK
FROM THE VALLEY
ON THE ROAD
SEASONS
THE MIRROR AND THE WORLD
THE DREAM IN A CELLAR
THE TREE THAT DRINKS WINE
THIS HEART WHICH HATED WAR
TODAY I’VE WALKED
YES, LIKE THE WINDS MARKED BY THE ROSE
BOUQUET
ON THE FAR SHORE
THE WIND-UP BIRD
LAST POEM
TO THE DAWN
The morning collapses like a stack of plates
in thousands of shards of porcelain and of hours
and of bells
and cascades
right up to the zinc of this very poor bistro
where the stars persist in the night of the café
She isn’t poor, this one
with her evening dress soiled and muddied
but rich with realities of morning
with the intoxication of her blood
and with the perfume of her breath which no insomnia can spoil
rich with herself and all the mornings
past, present and future
rich with herself and the sleep which wins her
with sleep rigid like mahogany
with sleep and the morning of herself
and with all her life, which reckons itself
only by mornings, brilliant dawns
cascades, sleeps,
living nights
she is rich, that one
even if she holds out her hand
and must sleep in the crisp morning
in her muddied dress
on a deserted bed.
LANDSCAPE
I’d dreamed of love: dream still, but love’s no longer
as this twist of lilac-rose whose perfumes mingled
charge the forest air where somewhere burns
a flame marking paths which never turn.
I’d dreamed of love: love still, but love’s no more
this storm where lightning sparks its scattered pyres
above disordered castles, and before
it vanishes, blasts farewell on the square.
It is a flint-crack under my step in the night,
the word no dictionary dare translate,
foam on the sea, spray-risen cumulus.
Everything aged grows rigid, luminous,
unknottable cords, nameless avenues.
I stiffen like the landscape, deathly, taut.
RECLINING
On the right, the sky, on the left, the sea.
And before my eyes, the grass and its flowers.
A cloud, on its way, follows its vertical path
parallel to the horizon’s plumb-level,
parallel to the horseman.
The horse runs towards the immense fall
as the other rises, interminably.
How simple and strange everything is!
Lying on my left
I lose interest in the landscape
and think only of very vague things
very vague and very happy
like the weary look which one allows wander
through the beautiful afternoon of summer
from here, from there,
in the delirium of the pointless.
TOMB
By dint of loving, I have lost myself in the ocean. And what an ocean!
A tempest of laughter and tears.
If you board a boat, take care to look at the figure on the prow which will fix you with an eye eaten away by the swell and the salt water.
But what am I saying? The shows of love scarcely interest me. I no longer want to be anything but a sail carried by the monsoon wind towards the unknown continents where I will find only one person. She for whom you will have a ready-made name.
I undress as does an explorer lost on an island and I remain motionless like a figure on a prow.
Hail to you, wide wind, and you, desert, and you, forgetfulness.
I will be forgotten. Some day, one will not know my name, but I will know theirs. One evening, covered in glory and rich, I will return, will knock on their door, completely naked, but they will not answer me, having opened the door, when I appear to their eyes.
I have won, at least, the sense of perpetuity. Not those, ridiculous, the concessions of the cemetery.
I wish in vain for the appearance of the guillotine, but I can only offer to the bloodthirsty mob my desire for suicide.
Revolution! You will shine only after my death, on the immense square of white marble which will cover my huge corpse.
France is a nest of wasps, Europe a rotten field, and the world a peninsula of my consciousness.
But happily there remain to me the stars, and the awareness of my moral grandeur opposed to the thousand obstacles which the world supplies for my love.
THE ANEMONE WHO REIGNED OVER THE SEA
The anemone who reigned over the sea
still reigns, that’s understood
but so little she’s lost
she’s lost at the bottom of the seas
she remembers her diamonds
suspended in a rainbow
suspended in the pink
and the oysters yawn around her
to offer her pearls
but the anemone who reigned over the sea
hardly reigns anymore, and the iron anchor
has bitten her cruelly and she will shortly die.
CHANT FOR THE BEAUTIFUL SEASON
Nothing anymore comes closer to inspiration
than the drunkenness of a spring morning,
Than the desire for a woman.
No longer to be oneself, to be everyone.
To place one’s feet on the earth with agility.
To savour the air we breathe.
I sing this evening not about what we must fight
but what we must defend.
The pleasures of life.
The wine we drink with our friends.
Love.
A fire in winter.
The river cool in summer.
The bread and meat of each meal.
The refrain one’s sings on a walk.
The bed where one sleeps.
The sleep, without dream or twist, without the anguish
of tomorrow
Spare time.
The freedom of a changing sky.
The feeling of dignity and many other things
which one refuses to hand over to others.
I love and sing the blossoming spring.
I love and sing summer with its fruits.
I love and sing the joy of living.
I love and sing the springtime.
I love and sing summer, the season I was born.
COUPLET OF THE WINE GLASS
When the train leaves don’t wave your hand,
not your handkerchief, nor your umbrella
but fill a glass of wine
and throw at the train whose slatted sides sing,
the long flame of wine,
the bloody flame of the wine like your tongue
and share with it
the palace and the bed
of your lips and your mouth.
DAWN
The greasy night, leaning at the edge of its chasms,,
contemplates the gardens of the disappearing day.
More briefly than the light, on the blade of the crime,
they have flourished. Already fades the portrait
of a world which death harasses and pushes.
How they blaze, the lighthouses, the pyres,
the far-off suns, the preordained comets!
And yet only, near the bed and its dying burden,
nightlights, trembling in the current of the air
from those gates open to earth and immensity.
all is night, all is dead, all is alone, but what does it matter
if one has for an instant, under the summer sun,
the illusion of love and abundance.
Come, misunderstood and deceiving night, and tell us
if fevered kisses, hollow studies
are wiser here than the kneeling prayer of the coward and the sickly.
The greasy night has fallen in familiar drops
where the day will follow in a docile fall
for already it is lifting on the hills its naked body.
It bathes in the spring, it crosses the valley,
its powerful reflection penetrates the sea.
The procession of sounds are taking flight
to sing the return of the beautiful adolescent.
Put out the fires, disperse the ashes,
the day is ready to be lived, the hour to be plucked.
EARTH
One day after another,
wave after wave.
Where do you go? Where do you all go?
Earth murdered by so many errant men!
Earth enriched by the corpses of so many men.
But the earth is us,
we are not on it
but forever in it.
FIVE O’ CLOCK
At five in the morning on a new and empty street
I hear the sound of a car moving off.
A fire alarm has its glass broken and the debris
of glass gleams in the gutter.
On the cobbles is a pool of blood and a wisp of smoke dissolves in the air.
Hey there! Hey there! Tell me what’s happened.
Waken up! I want to know what’s going on.
Tell me about these men’s adventures.
FROM THE VALLEY
At the detour of the footpath in the mountain
the carcase of a mule that died last year
under the too-heavy load it bore
has finally whitened in the leaden sun.
The scent of thyme and the hum of insects
fill the air intoxicates of the traveller
who feels time hesitate as he follows his route
and the world vacillate in the heat.
In the valley, at the bottom of the steep slopes,
mules are trotting past
with the noise of their little bells and their shoes.
In a farmyard men are surrounding
a ewe which has just given birth; one lifts
to the sky a lamb astonished by life.
ON THE ROAD
Sometimes on the road one comes across vines
whose ripe grapes are near at hand -
They’re good! And let’s leave for who knows where tomorrow?
for the leaf resembles the hand by its lines.
But let’s cherish the vines where one reads the sacred
signs of youth and human desires,
the wine is drunk, let’s leave, let’s retake the path
which is born with the song of the cock and dies with the swan’s.
There remains however the imprint of our glasses
on the ironed tablecloth. At the hands of the washerwoman
the satin will soon part in the flow of water.
So go the oaths; sweet girl who sings,
we’ll raise a toast to the honour of rogues.
Keep filling our glasses to the end of the cask.
SEASONS
The day is in its place and flows at the far end of time
unless the living being rises across spaces
stacked in the memory and relieving
the brain and the heart of the burden of stubborn remembrances.
Beings, powerful beings, your very name passes,
to be and have been, pastimes and springtime,
it goes, it’s gone like an endless water
without scars, without witnesses, without ponds.
Seasons, you cherish at least the grain of wheat
which must moan until the days of thaw; and the key
to open for departure the carters’ gates.
The stars in the sky by you are gathered
the years soon move to an end, and the weighed-down steps
hobble on the paths leading back to the frontiers.
THE MIRROR AND THE WORLD
Each day with its keen teeth
time tears little by little the silvering
of this mirror and restores
to space a new plunder.
Leprosy marks the face
and masks a lateness which stretches out
weak, weak from recognising itself
each evening and morning.
The landscape appearing
with its sky and distance
frees a reflection and invites
Narcissus to live the uncertain,
the limpid, the beautiful journey
between evening and morning.
THE DREAM IN A CELLAR
All the bottles were broken in this cellar
so the smell of wine drunk by the sand rose
like and October mist above the old quays
and the saltpetre walls were yellow with lava.
The spider spinning her web balanced
her pig-like belly swollen by the fumes
in the manner of a frigate at the hour when the sea
laps and bursts in the shade with the noise of an abscess.
Beautiful frigate with the fabulous name of a lover
your siren at the prow with her well-combed hair
would have handed you over to the spiders’ fangs
you suddenly in the web; and numerous
your sails which swell with tiny North winds
pushing you, white, to the assaults of twilights
black as a sea disturbed, streaking
the foam which coils itself in the neck of the whirlwind,
beautiful frigate, white as the shirt
a washerwoman forgot, left in a field
on a drying line on a starless night,
beautiful frigate sailing to marvellous promises.
For no other noise is heard in this dungeon
than the water crying within the sonorous movements
and the sound of a latecomer’s steps rising still
who dreams of the sweetnesses of a warm bed
THE TREE THAT DRINKS WINE
The tree that drinks wine
wants us to sleep in its shade
like the stag and the rabbit
fed on cucumber and thyme
The tree which drinks wine
is a well-known pal
good for morning and evening
and all our cavalcade days
The tree which drinks wine
told us this morning
no need to tell the future
not every day is Tuesday
The tree that drinks wine
pours it to the entire earth
it’s not stupid it’s crafty
and its shadow will be the last
And its shadow will be the last
on the earth if it’s still there
and on the earth and the sea
the second of the final dawn.
THIS HEART WHICH HATED WAR
This heart which hated war, see how it beats
for combat and battle!
This heart which only beat to the rhythm of the seas,
those of the seasons, to those of the hours of day and night,
How it swells and sends through the veins a blood
burning with saltpetre and hatred
And brings such a noise to the brain that the eardrums
whistle
And it’s impossible that this noise will not pour out into the town
and the country
As the sound of a bell calls to riot and combat.
Listen, I hear what is coming back to me in its echoes.
But no, it is the sound of other hearts, millions of other hearts
beating like mine across France.
They beat, all these hearts, with the same rhythm,
the same need
Their sound is that of the sea assaulting the cliffs
And all that blood carries to millions of brains
the same word of command:
Rise against Hitler and death to his partisans!
Nevertheless this heart hated war and beat
to the rhythm of the seasons,
But a single word: Liberty was enough to waken
the old angers
And millions of Frenchmen prepare themselves in the shadows
for the need which the coming dawn will impose on them.
For these hearts which hated war were beating for freedom
with the same rhythm as the seasons and the seas,
as day and night.
TODAY I’VE WALKED
Today I’ve walked with my friend,
even though he’s dead,
I have walked with my friend.
How lovely they were, the trees in flower,
the chestnut blossoms that rained the day he died.
With my friend I have walked.
Now I know the dead a little better,
I’ve seen plenty of undertakers’ assistants
but I don’t go too close to them.
Which is why all day today
I’ve walked with my friend.
He found me grown a little older,
slightly aged, but he told me
‘You too will come where I am,
some Saturday or Sunday’:
I looked at the trees in flower,
at the river passing under the bridge
and suddenly I saw I was alone.
And so I came back among the living.
YES, LIKE THE WINDS
MARKED BY THE ROSE
Yes, like the winds marked by the rose
there is a sense of space and time,
if there is one there are a thousand or more
so many that they can’t all be felt.
For who of us hasn’t imagined or sensed
shadows wandering outside geometries,
universes escaping from our senses?
At the meeting points of oblique roads
we hear it fading, the sound of a horn,
always reborn, always identical.
This vision of the sky and the rose,
it becomes absorbed and dissolves in the air
like the sounds which make our flesh tremble
or the glimmers under our closed eyelids.
We collide with other universes
without feeling, seeing or hearing them,
in the hollow summer, the peaks of winter
other seasons fall on us in ashes.
While with the winds marked by the rose
the door slams and the flagpole creaks
the sail fills and for no visible reason
an absurd presence imposes itself on us,
material, restless and indifferent.
BOUQUET
Three thoughts three poppies three worries
three worries three roses three carnations
the three roses for my love
the three carnations for my friend
the three poppies for the little girl so sad
the three thoughts for my pal
the three worries for myself.
ON THE FAR SHORE
The blind man stretched his hand out to the queen
the queen gave to him her mouth
miracles, you wilt along my path!
My friends are muzzled
what use is it to speak the language of the eyes and hands
I’m compiling a dictionary of an unknown language
its alphabet like the reverberations along the avenue
I am the slave of certain distinguished letters
letters of hate I’ve written you all
it was in August
I was wondering if I was capable of love or hate
my fountain pen wrote at my dictation
whether it willed or not
in a women’s penal colony in the tropics
it’s there my beloved must be found
the blade makes a nick in her large neck
the trees shed and become hands
when I have neither feet nor hands
I’ll still have wings
O crimes what difference is there between you
and the deaths of roses?
One day I’ll be a surprising lover
women will all love me
but I’ve such fear of not understanding.
THE WIND-UP BIRD
The bird with the scorched head
which sang at night
which woke the child
which lost its feathers in the inkwell
The bird with its feet in 7 places
which broke the dishes
which ruined the hats
which came back from Suresnes
The bird the wind-up bird
was lost its key
its key of fields
its vault key
Now you know why it doesn’t sing anymore
LAST POEM
I have so fiercely dreamed
of you, so walked, so spoken,
so loved your shadow that nothing
of you remains, not the least token
and nothing is left to me but to be
shadow among shadow, the hundredth
part: to be the shadow that will fasten
to your steps in the sun.
JEAN TARDIEU
A WOMAN A BIRD
FLOWERS AND ABYSS
THE FALSE SAILOR
EVEN THOUGH
THE LITTLE OPTIMIST
MIDDAY
UNKNOWN JUSTICE
PETRIFIED DAYS
THE MASK
PRESENCE
APARTMENTS
THE SOUND OF THE SEA
THE SUFFOCATED GODS
CHRONICLE
CROSSROADS OF NIGHTMARES
DAYS
THE TOWN AT THE FOOT OF SPACE
EPITAPH
HELL AT HOME
PERILS OF MEMORY
HOLDERLIN’S GRAVE
WHEN THE NIGHT OF MY HEART
THE CHILD-EXECUTIONER
I DON’T EXPECT
MEMENTO MORI
NATURE
IS IT A BEAST?
NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHER
ON THE EARTH WHERE THE DAYS MERGE
DILEMMA
THE IMMOBILE WORLD
TIME GONE
WE WILL GO NO FURTHER
ISLE DE FRANCE
A WOMAN A BIRD
The great bird which flies above the plain
with the same rhythm as the hollows and the woods
we have watched a long time glide in an absolute sky
which was neither day nor night.
A stork? An eagle? Everything together,
the silent voice of the barn-owl
and this royal wingspan
of a god which made itself a bird…
Our eyes turned about an instant
suddenly saw the marvel descend
it was the daughter of dawn and desire
an angel in our furrow fallen with a body
more feminine than love itself and long, long
placing her feet scarcely on the soil for the wind of her wings
lifted her again. At last the smooth and white plumage
on this woman of crystal folded itself back. She seemed not to see us
nor to be surprised that a lake
spread out before her steps … already
she dived smiling to herself
happy to remember the previous elements
and a time without limit … she wove in that transparent water
the signs of an unknown language
then, shaking herself, surrounded by pearls
newly brilliant and icy
she stamped the ground with her feet … so I see her still
leaning slightly forward
and already almost detached
just as we have seen her rise and disappear into the blue
From that time I have known
through what subtle will and secret movements
we can fly when all else sleeps.
FLOWERS AND ABYSS
I
Under the flowers known to me there is no plain
but the black milk of the unknown abyss;
in my bitter dream I return them to the night,
they descend, they extinguish themselves slowly.
II
A house advances slowly
at the flower-covered side of the abyss
its smoke already turns blue …
Ah! That it be saved
by words, before its fall
and that it fall into the spirit
without noise, without suffering!
III
Indolent maid
who passes close to the flowers
hear the abyss thunder!
The lightning of origins
illuminates the colours.
Silence, lightning flash, future,
hair glowing,
I do not know what to do
with such a splendour.
IV
Two hands which have lost the track of a face
approach, scenting the shadow in search
of a form once human. But the mask
is filled by the abyss.
The terrified hands withdraw
and take with them the flowers.
V
Trees, to win the terrible favours of the abyss
we will ascend on the inside as far as our flowers.
So the wind, so the autumn, so
our accomplishment will be
this fall, light, happy, desolate.
VI
Gnawed by a fringe of shadow and gold
flowers red, black, violet,
purer than yourself, there
where the future hesitates
as the spirit at the centre of sleep is roused,
as the silence in the hollow of the storm
or liberty in the secrets of its acts
when the word has become so vast
that there is but to meet,
a great winged space in the air
so, O flowers in yourselves in its turn
the abyss huddles.
VII
If the look grows if it is the same abyss
it can contain and preserve all,
but it is not without fear that it welcomes
this flower with heavy lashes
greater than the sea.
VIII
The whitest a long time
have with sorrow
retained the light of evening,
the courageous ones!
Soon they will go to burn
in the abyss of the sun.
THE FALSE SAILOR
To deliver my life
from immobility
I have made great efforts –
wrapped in my rigging
in my fallen sails
I will gain the harbour
I have never left.
Image of myself
bird, cruel form
which parts and which returns
in the odour of the sea
each turn of your wing
overpowers me with bonds.
Wrapped in my rigging
in my fallen sails
I will gain the harbour
I have never left.
EVEN THOUGH
Even though I saw with my own eyes
the ancestors painted on the pictures
descend from their frame and walk in the thickness of the world
Even though I saw with my own eyes
the roads of the earth rise up into the sky
gracious and tilted over like fountains
Even though I heard the sun
(what, it? Yes the sun the sun)
speak to me in a lowered voice call me by my name
Even though I took the stature
and the silence and the heaviness of a house
Even though I had found the key
to the great tunnel which traverses the globe
and I began the slow slide along its walls
Even though I saw with my own eyes
the Other Side of things swarm
even though even though even though
I would always believe in the sacred reality
which parting from our hands sinks into the night
THE LITTLE OPTIMIST
From morning I have watched,
have watched from the window;
have seen the children pass.
An hour later they were grown,
another hour, ancient, trembling.
How quickly they aged, I thought!
And I who grow young each instant!
MIDDAY
As in the past in my too dear shadows
today under the waters of the sun
I dive … what is this laughter
which calls me, what is that savour of air
and that blue marbled with stains of brightness
in the fishermen’s harbour? Do not answer anymore
if I question! It is “thus”, it is for talking, there is no
answer to the why of pleasure
nor anymore to that of anguish, for I know
and I hear and I hear …
Ah! That further off the wind
tilts at the side of the gulf the red wind of a sailing ship
that the milk of the light, feeble surface,
covers the depths of the night, that death
be nearer than everywhere in the furnaces of midday,
I can’t forget, but my life
is just like this day: the inferno under the smile,
one yielding nothing to the other in Truth
and my eyes and my body
consumed under the sky without dreams
are made in order to know you and be like you,
lightning flash of that which moves
across my eyelids
trees reddened by fire
reflections on the side of the small boats
stone burning in one’s hands.
UNKNOWN JUSTICE
Still it echoes in the other room,
that deep voice beyond the screen,
it judges, condemns and then pardons
a crime foreign to deep reasoning.
I don’t know if I’m the one who’s guilty,
I don’t know if the voice bears a name.
PETRIFIED DAYS
The bandaged eyes the trembling hands
deceived by the sound of my steps
which carry everywhere my silence
losing the tracks of my days if I wait for or pass myself
always I find myself again there
as the stone under the sky.
Through the night and through the sun
condemned without proof and without fault
to the walls of my narrow space
I turn to the bottom of my sleep
desolate as hope
innocent like remorse.
A man who pretends to grow old
imprisoned in his infancy
the future shines precisely
we will remember it again
the soil trembles at the same place,
time rises like the sea.
THE MASK
An imaginary life
is laid on all the towns.
Everywhere false lights
are painted on the eyelids
of tight-shut windows
The pale gleaming sun
is a mere plaster on the stones.
The real town is in the night.
PRESENCE
We search at the edge of a cloudy water
for the bursting forth of a secret sun.
The assuaged desires are cast to the stumps
here and there under the uncertain day.
Maybe it’s a desk, or a meadow
littered with debris or reliefs, or yet
an armchair covered with frightful embroideries?
In any case someone whistles
and another answers.
A fine ray flees from sun to ceiling.
It’s the moment to laugh and break life
under the tapping of our heels.
APARTMENTS
That which one hears through the ceilings,
which comes from far-below floors,
neither raises nor lowers its pitch.
Gravely the syllables drone
the hat falls on the mouth which sang,
on the water which runs in the kitchens,
all that breaks free and re-echoes.
Let us crouch down in these woollen caves,
envelop our laughter and cries
and not be dragged by the day
to the floor of a jittery world.
THE SOUND OF THE SEA
The spirit carried toward the sound of the sea
which I cannot hear
or toward that space forbidden to stars
whose memory I hold
I meet the voice the warmth
the scent of surprising trees
I embrace a mysterious body
I grasp the hands of friends.
THE SUFFOCATED GODS
The opacity of the walls, silence
fallen onto obscure clamours,
time where patience sinks,
leaden sun on sadness
and the twilights of oneself,
iron forms, masks of fire,
rocks shut again on the gods
dripping with rain and weeping,
open, open to those who love them,
open your gates which are killing me!
CHRONICLE
... And as he refused to advance
he was hit on the threshold
by a hail of crossfire. Others,
for having tried to flee,
fell beyond the hills. Still others,
pulled out of bed at daybreak
were locked in barns
and the crackle of the fire choked their cries.
In the town one died for having talked,
others for having kept silent
and the dawn broke on a calcined land,
the rain and the smoke and the debris
having erased the frontiers,
the roots of all evil.
However,
on the other side of the sea,
while new massacres
smouldered slowly under the ancestral ash,
young girls were singing in the churches.
CROSSROADS OF NIGHTMARES
People pursued by their dreams,
in deep sleep, in full terror, gather
on some vague terrain open to the flow
of the sewers, blacker than night.
‘I was running’ says one, ‘and a dog bit me
but the woman beside me was already dying;
a horse brought me happiness awaited me…’
The other groans: ‘I left my body
I changed `the mansion of my face
I didn’t know who I was,
moreover when I saw this ring on my finger,
I burst into tears without knowing why.’
And all half-naked laughing
to the point of breathlessness
form up further on a group shivering
on having discovered a treasure
on the cobblestones where nothing shines
but a shard of a bottle
emerald and sapphire in the blood of the stream.
Thus they go, one and the other
urged on by the breath of a dream
which carries them, drifting.
DAYS
In a dark town carried along by time
(each house in advance collapses with the passing days)
I returned, I left with all my shadows.
A thousand suns ascended as at the bottom of a river,
a thousand others descended, colouring the high walls;
I pursued hands on the edge of the balconies;
forms paled (the light is on them)
or fell into memory (the rays have turned.)
The days, the days... who sighs and who calls me,
for which feast or which entreaty or which pardon?
THE TOWN AT THE FOOT OF SPACE
This little piece of space is slapped by the spirit
as the sky is by the swallow
or the paved emptiness by the fragile noise
of a bike seen by people with gloomy
eyebrows, their arms loaded with sad parcels.
Space, such a thirst! With our steps
so slowly going along the narrow tracks
under the houses where there are no smiles.
Time runs past, but the milestone is always there!
O source always present on the roofs
drunk upside down by fevered eyes,
force always stronger by its absence,
space, join with time to deliver
our bodies tortured by hope!
Too little space and too much time. O move away,
space, boat crushed in this port,
lift the tombstone of these dead,
rip your ropes of smoke, leave in the night,
make of every window a blessed
opening on the freedom of the infinite!
EPITAPH
To break the net of day and seasons,
to know what it was, that unknown voice,
on the bridge of the sun aloof from my life
I have stopped.
And the rivers have fled,
the shadows recognised,
space, white eyes, I listen I speak again
I remember everything that has ever been.
HELL AT HOME
In the secrecy of a darkened corridor
at the bottom of an uncertain mirror
a man comes across his image.
Such he sees, such he wants to be,
proud, joyous, triumphant
and above all young, like a god!
But the image fades and is lost
in the noise of groaning pipes
and suddenly his heart fails:
in the glass (which shakes a little
with each passing car)
appears a new occupant
slowly, slowly freeing himself
a kind of humpbacked dog
who toward the sky squared by the courtyard
shrieks at death and casts a look full of tears.
THE PERILS OF MEMORY
They gather together often, to struggle
against those most tenacious memories.
Each takes his place on an armchair
and takes his turn with the story.
First appears the accident
then love, then sordid regrets,
finally the lacklustre hopes.
All those pictures are painted
on the wall between flowers on the paper.
They think thus to accustom themselves
to the poisons their memory carries;
I though, behind the door
see the present flee with its secrets.
HOLDERLIN’S GRAVE
The day, the day drones with confused reproaches
the night grumbles and complains
it moans without saying why
The rising sun
speaks to us like a father
but we don’t listen to his counsels
Space is inhabited by innumerable fires
which address us with incomprehensible signals
and time this long while
harries our memory
like a face impossible to find again.
Alone after long days of walking
I often go on foot to this theatre of shades
and before the deserted stage
I keep vigil with the tightened heart
calling without echo
those great actors who after a hundred thousand years
reign over our ingratitude
and speak without making themselves heard.
Forest, why still be silent?
Waken up and walk! Sky,
why close your eyes in broad daylight?
Mixed with the golden chains of the sun
are the treasures hidden by your night! Return
near to us, distant spaces! May our times
be mingled, may all,
past, present, future, together be given
to the indomitable spirit which hopes for you
and waits for you!...
And if, from this tumult
comes a voice, unique, gently
dominating the thunder, and that Smile
stronger than the mortal combat of the elements,
may we be finally instructed
in that unalterable peace
which has been sown in the spirit of man
since the first day!
But nothing comes by way of response
but the sound of his heart, and always the silence of the world
appears alone to announce the word and always,
in us, immense voices go, growing fainter,
with the memory of the Promise,
like a storm moving slowly away!
WHEN THE NIGHT OF MY HEART
When the night of my heart descends into my hands
and from my hands into the water which bathes everything:
having plunged there I rise again naked
in every image:
a word for each leaf a gesture for each shade
‘It is I who hears you it is I who knows you
and it is I who changes you.’
THE CHILD-EXECUTIONER
The terrified child covers his eyes with his arms,
but the Man descends, growing bigger with every step.
The child calls for help
from earth and heaven. But the Man
with each step grown greater and heavier
cries: ‘You have seen what you shouldn’t have,
you’re going to die!’ And his fist is raised, his eyes blazing.
The child makes a last effort
to break away from this world
and just as the executioner is about to reach him
he becomes the smoke from a brush fire
and is loosed by the wind.
And the vagabond on the cold grass sways,
shaken by sobs.
I DON’T EXPECT
I don’t expect a god purer than this same day:
it rises I see it my life is in its hands:
the earth which stretches under the trees I love
prolongs in the sky the rivers the roads...
I go I have a hundred thousand years for this sweet journey.
MEMENTO MORI
Beside the gilded panelling of the offices
there the corridors thread in the endless mirrors,
each door, each pillar
hides a killer who yawns, bored:
time is long and surety is thin.
Nevertheless, outside in the shadow of furniture
as in a gate, sheltering from rain
a woman stands, gleaming like a pane,
watches with empty eyes.
Hello!.. Yes, it’s me... It’s time!..
Listen... Where are you?..Where are you?..
Who’s speaking?.. Who’s there?.. I can’t hear!..
The sea had rolled along the avenues:
tomorrow, sand under the tread of the caravans.
And the archaeologist among the rocks
will confuse our centuries and our days
and the conch of a rusted phone
will deliver him no secret
of the humming of our words.
NATURE
It is a bird which approaches, weeping
it is a cloud which speaks while dreaming
a rock rolls to mark time
a reed admires itself in the glass of a pond
the trees of the forest
are there, like people, like people.
All these make a waiting crowd,
but man – gone, gone, gone...
IS IT A BEAST?
Is it a man or a beast? He runs,
terrified, haggard, between the briars,
shoes heavy, face and hands
bleeding. Bells clang in his head
and the taste of death is in his mouth.
Where to go? To the left? The branches crackle under boots.
To the right? the dogs snarl. And, before him,
bullets make the puddles spurt.
Then he charges, haphazardly. The open ground,
white under the sun, appears. Alas, no shade!
Not a ditch, not a tree, not the least
shelter into which he can fall before the executioners come!
Already the baying, more numerous and nearer,
reverberates
and suddenly, there, there in the tall grass,
one of the pursuers rises and fires! Another
a little further off, then two, then ten, then a hundred.
The horizon swarms and gleams
with helmets, rifles, harnesses,
the light of machine guns. The man falls,
leaps up again, manages a few paces, totters,
ragged in a dust of dark blood
and collapses, still at last, while from the side,
a reedy bugle rasps.
A thousand men for the death of only one? Was it a dream?
Was it not rather,
in a valley touched by the autumn sun,
the creaking of a cart,
the gleam of light on apples
and the rags of a scarecrow
shaken by the peaceful wind?...
NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHER
What to say, what to think? The day
by its insistence on appearing,
confess it, confess it,
exhausts its best friends.
The night, on the other hand, is sly,
blending in at every instant,
it beats on our eyelids
it creeps around objects:
worrying, worrying!
As for that nameless thing
which is neither night nor day,
lower your voice I advise you;
better not to speak of it here!
ON THE EARTH WHERE THE DAYS MERGE
On the earth where the days merge,
trembling with having seen again a flower,
I crush the blood from my heart
in the hard walls of this world.
I abandon to the night its delights
near the edges glimpsed through closed eyes;
the sand is sown with poppies
to master time as it slips past.
Till tomorrow, tender day, till tomorrow!
stay young sleeping under the shore
I carry the flame still lit
in the shelter of my faithful hands.
A stubborn and avaricious traveller,
facing the approaching flood,
I seek the country of rocks
the last captive growls.
DILEMMA
I’ve seen barriers
I’ve collided with them
it was pure spirit.
I’ve seen leeks
I’ve eaten them
it was nature.
No further!
Always barriers
always leeks!
Ah! If I could
leave the leeks
behind the barriers
the key under the gate
and set off somewhere else
to speak of other things!
THE IMMOBILE WORLD
Pits of twilight
deaf fountain
lake without brightness
thick presence
feeble beating
there is the instant
nothing no one
a heavy shadow
and its silence
I wait centuries
nothing echoes
nothing appears
on this tomb
space moves
it’s my thought
for no look
for no ear
the truth.
TIME GONE
The hour the days the years which consume us,
that time is no more, we have passed it
we will go no more on the sonorous riverbanks;
the white foam and the hair of horses
under the sky fixed in piled heaps
like bones which a lone crow decorates
(a black icicle, remnant of a breath
shines sleeping all around its nostrils)
such are the designs which we have traced.
We will go no more along the waters
we will go no more to defy the clouds,
we lamenting the death of the seasons
we will have no more clamours nor tears…
We will be there as are all other things
the standing tree which floats in its own shadow
the white sun which turns around us,
the peace of the day, its invincible arms.
We will be there calm and profitable
without a sigh in our rows of reeds
praising the sun because it gathers us together
praising the sky because it resembles us
because it is our deep silence
because it sleeps in our weakness
because it gleams in our verity
and our eyes serene once more gaze
as another immobile time comes up.
WE WILL GO NO FURTHER
One (who passed us) tapped us on the shoulders
‘Let’s run there!’.. ‘But where?’… ‘I don’t know!’
He who spoke to us was shaking our shoulders.
An identical wind tilted towards the horizon
our faces ravaged by glimmers of blood.
We shrieked appeals and cries of rage
which prowled in the night like severed hands.
But why those fragments on the old carriages?
Because we were from the same family.
And why such love and why such hate?
Because we were on a desert island.
ISLE DE FRANCE
I wandered beside your face
poplars canals and palaces
across the roofs the clouds
you spoke low-voiced I listened
I wandered beside your shores
you but a smile, a dream
your rocks your hands your thunderstorms
a dream to me in the sun
And you, you passed through paintings
their shadow-people loved you
set tables, tender faces
in the corner a dagger gleamed
cockades cannons drums
what Night came I was ready
before me stretched on velvet
harvest meadow forest
I fell asleep to your murmur
people and beasts were singing
delirium of the measure
death silence peace.