Laughing at the sky and the planets
Mouths soaked with confidence
The wise
Want children
And children of their children
Until they perish from erosion
Time just has time for the mad
Only the abyss will flourish
And the wise are foolish.
*
from Poésie et Vérité (1942)
As low as the silence
Of a corpse planted in the earth
Nothing but the dark in its head
As dreary and muffled
As autumn in the pond
Covered with dull shame
The widow-poison of its flower
And of these dressed-up idiots
Spits night on us
from Poésie et Vérité (1942)
A translation for Ukraine, and all the besieged.
“…a very simple wish, an everyday wish, a hardworking wish, to free oneself from the occupier.” – Paul Éluard
In my school-books
On my desk, on the trees
On the sand and on the snow
I write your name
On every page I read
On every blank page
Stone, blood, paper and ash
I write your name
On perspex screens
On soldiers’ guns
On the tyrant’s jewels
I write your name
In the forest on the steppe
On the nests on the thyme bush
On the echo of my childhood
I write your name
On the events of the night
On the day’s white bread
In the married seasons
I write your name
On all my sky blue rags
On the sun dried pool
On the vibrant lake of the moon
I write your name
On the fields of the horizon
On the wings of birds
And on the shadow’s engines
I write your name
On each wave of the dawn
On the sea on the boats
On the lost mountain
I write your name
On the froth of the clouds
On the sweat of the storm
On the thick and tasteless rain
I write your name
On the sparkling shapes
On the colours’ bells
On the real truth
I write your name
On the waking paths
On the rolled out roads
In the packed city squares
I write your name
With the light we switch on
With the light we switch off
On our gathered houses
I write your name
On the apple, cut in two
Of my mirror, and my room
On my bed’s empty frame
I write your name
On my gentle dog who eats so well
On her raised ears
On her clumsy paws
I write your name
On the diving board of my doorstep
On my everyday objects
On the surge of blessed fire
I write your name
On all the flesh of lovers
On the face of my friends
On every hand that’s offered
I write your name
On the window with its surprises
On attentive lips
Well above the silence
I write your name
On my destroyed shelters
On my fallen lighthouses
On the walls of my despair
I write your name
On unwanted absences
On naked loneliness
In my steps with death
I write your name
On the return of health
When risk has disappeared
On hope without memory
I write your name
And by the power of a word
I begin my life again
I was born to know you
To name you
Freedom.
Sun-prey prisoner of my head,
rub out the hill, rub out the forest.
The sky is more beautiful than ever.
Grape-dragonflies
give it form so precise
that I disperse with a wave.
Clouds of the first day,
insensible clouds, that nothing authorised,
their grain burns
in the straw-fire of my eyes.
In the end, to cover itself in dawn
the day must be as pure as the night
Ban on Knowledge (1928)
V
My words to you don’t change me
I don’t switch from biggest to smallest
Look at me
Perspective doesn’t work for me
I hold on here
And you can’t get away
There’s nothing else around –
And if I turn there is nothing on both sides
Nothing and me
The Apt Little Ones (1926)
VIII
She always refuses to understand, to hear,
she laughs to hide her terror of herself
she has always walked under the night’s arches
and everywhere she goes
she leaves
the imprint of broken things
We sleep alongside red angels who show us the desert without microscopics and without soft, sad awakenings. We sleep. A wing breaks us, escape, we have wheels older than flown feathers, lost, to explore the graveyards of slowness, the only luxury.
*
The bottle which surrounds the cloth of our wounds gives in to the slightest want. Let us take hearts, brains, the muscles of anger, let’s take the invisible flowers of pale little girls and tied children. Let us take the hand of memory, let us close our souvenir eyes, a theory of trees liberated by thieves hits us and divides us, all the fragments are good. Who will reassemble them: terror, suffering or disgust?
*
Sleep, my brothers. This inexplicable chapter has become incomprehensible. Giants pass by, breathing terrible moans, giant’s moans, moans like the dawn wants to push through them, the dawn which can’t complain anymore, after all this time, my brothers, after all this time.
I
Quiet world of rundown homes
Of night and fields
II
Good faces ready for fire faces ready for full speed
For refusing the night, for injuries, for impacts
III
Faces ready for anything
Here comes the void to fix you
Your death’s going to be an example
IV
The death overthrown heart
V
They’ve made you pay in bread
Sky earth water sleep
And the misery
Of your life
VI
They say want good intelligence
They ration the strong judge the mad
Make charity divide one penny
They salute dead bodies
They bomb themselves with niceties
VII
They persevere they exaggerate they are not of our world
VIII
Women children have the same treasure
Of spring-green leaves and pure milk
And of legacy
In their clear eyes
IX
Women children have the same treasure
In the eyes
Some men have defended it if they could
X
Women children have the same pink roses
In the eyes
Each one lets out its blood
XI
Fear and courage to live and to die
Death so difficult and so easy
XII
Those for whom this treasure was sung
Those for whom this treasure was gashed
XIII
Those whose despair
Enrages the desolate flames of hope
Let’s crack open together the last bud of the future
XIV
Outcasts the death the soil and the disgust
Of our enemies has the dull
Colour of our night
We will defeat it.
I am a man in the emptiness
Deaf Blind Mute
On an immense pedestal of black silence
Nothing This oblivion without end
This perfection, a repeated zero…
Solitude, finalised
The day is clean of work, and the night is pure
–
Sometimes, I wear your sandals,
and I step towards you
Sometimes I put on your dress
and then: I have your breasts, your stomach
So, okay, I see myself under your mask
And I know myself
*
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