Contents


The Word

I have an easy beauty one that is happy.

I glide on the surface of winds.

I glide on the surface of seas

I have grown sentimental

I no longer know the guide

I no longer move silk over ice

I am diseased flowers and stones

I love the most chinese of nudes

I love the most naked lapses of wings

I am old but here I am beautiful

And the shadow that flows from the deep windows

Each evening spares the dark heart of my stare.


Your Orange Hair in the Void of the World

Your orange hair in the void of the world

In the void of these heavy panes of silence

Shade where my bare hands seek your image.

The shape of your heart is chimerical

And your love resembles my lost desire.

O sighs of amber, dreams, glances.

But you were not always here. My memory

Is still obscured by seeing your coming

And going. Time consumes words, like love.


Nusch

The sentiments apparent

The lightness of approach

The tresses of caresses.

Without worry or suspicion

Your eyes confide in what they see

Seen by what they gaze at.

Confidence of crystal

Between two mirrors

At night your eyes are lost

To fuse waking to desire.


Thus, Woman, Principle of Life, Speaker of the Ideal

Would you see

The dark form of the sun

The contours of life

Or be truly dazzled

By the fire that fuses all

The flame conveyer of modesties

In flesh in gold that fine gesture

Error is as unknown

As the limits of spring

The temptation prodigious

All touches all travels you

At first it was only a thunder of incense

Which you love the more

The fine praise at four

Lovely motionless nude

Violin mute but palpable

I speak to you of seeing

I will speak to you of your eyes

Be faceless if you wish

Of their unwilling colour

Of luminous stones

Colourless

Before the man you conquer

His blind enthusiasm

Reigns naively like a spring

In the desert

Between the sands of night and the waves of day

Between earth and water

No ripple to erase

No road possible

Between your eyes and the images I see there

Is all of which I think

Myself inderacinable

Like a plant which masses itself

Which simulates rock among other rocks

That I carry for certain

You all entire

All that you gaze at

All

This is a boat

That sails a sweet river

It carries playful women

And patient grain

This is a horse descending the hill

Or perhaps a flame rising

A great barefooted laugh in a wretched heart

An autumn height of soothing verdure

A bird that persists in folding its wings in its nest

A morning that scatters the reddened light

To waken the fields

This is a parasol

And this the dress

Of a lace-maker more seductive than a bouquet

Of the bell-sounds of the rainbow

This thwarts immensity

This has never enough space

Welcome is always elsewhere

With the lightning and the flood

That accompany it

Of medusas and fires

Marvellously obliging

They destroy the scaffolding

Topped by a sad coloured flag

A bounded star

Whose fingers are paralysed

I speak of seeing you

I know you living

All exists all is visible

There is no fleck of night in your eyes

I see by a light exclusively yours.


‘You Rise the Water Unfolds’

You rise the water unfolds

You sleep the water flowers

You are water ploughed from its depths

You are earth that takes root

And in which all is grounded

You make bubbles of silence in the desert of sound

You sing nocturnal hymns on the arcs of the rainbow

You are everywhere you abolish the roads

You sacrifice time

To the eternal youth of an exact flame

That veils Nature to reproduce her

Woman you show the world a body forever the same

Yours

You are its likeness.


I Only Wish to Love You

I only wish to love you

A storm fills the valley

A fish the river

I have made you the size of my solitude

The whole world to hide in

Days and nights to understand

To see no more in your eyes

Than what I think of you

And a world in your image

And days and nights ruled by your eyelids.


The World is Blue As an Orange

The world is blue as an orange

No error the words do not lie

They no longer allow you to sing

In the tower of kisses agreement

The madness the love

She her mouth of alliance

All the secrets all the smiles

Or what dress of indulgence

To believe in quite naked.

The wasps flourish greenly

Dawn goes by round her neck

A necklace of windows

You are all the solar joys

All the sun of this earth

On the roads of your beauty.


We Have Created the Night

We have created the night I hold your hand I watch

I sustain you with all my powers

I engrave in rock the star of your powers

Deep furrows where your body’s goodness fruits

I recall your hidden voice your public voice

I smile still at the proud woman

You treat like a beggar

The madness you respect the simplicity you bathe in

And in my head which gently blends with yours with the night

I wonder at the stranger you become

A stranger resembling you resembling everything I love

One that is always new.


Even When We Sleep

Even when we sleep we watch over each other

And this love heavier than a lake’s ripe fruit

Without laughter or tears lasts forever

One day after another one night after us.


To Marc Chagall

Donkey or cow, cockerel or horse

On to the skin of a violin

A singing man a single bird

An agile dancer with his wife

A couple drenched in their youth

The gold of the grass lead of the sky

Separated by azure flames

Of the health-giving dew

The blood glitters the heart rings

A couple the first reflection

And in a cellar of snow

The opulent vine draws

A face with lunar lips

That never slept at night.


Air Vif

I looked in front of me

In the crowd I saw you

Among the wheat I saw you

Beneath a tree I saw you

At the end of my journeys

In the depths of my torment

At the corner of every smile

Emerging from water and fire

Summer and winter I saw you

All through my house I saw you

In my arms I saw you

In my dreams I saw you

I will never leave you.


Certitude

If I speak it’s to hear you more clearly

If I hear you I’m sure to understand you

If you smile it’s the better to enter me

If you smile I will see the world entire

If I embrace you it’s to widen myself

If we live everything will turn to joy

If I leave you we’ll remember each other

In leaving you we’ll find each other again.


We two

We two take each other by the hand

We believe everywhere in our house

Under the soft tree under the black sky

Beneath the roofs at the edge of the fire

In the empty street in broad daylight

In the wandering eyes of the crowd

By the side of the foolish and wise

Among the grown-ups and children

Love’s not mysterious at all

We are the evidence ourselves

In our house lovers believe.


‘At Dawn I Love You’

At dawn I love you I’ve the whole night in my veins

All night I have gazed at you

I’ve all to divine I am certain of shadows

They give me the power

To envelop you

To stir your desire to live

At my motionless core

The power to reveal you

To free you to lose you

Invisible flame in the day.

If you go out the door opens on daylight

If you go out the door to myself stands open.


‘She Looks Into Me…’

She looks into me

The unknowing heart

To see if I love

She has confidence she forgets

Under the clouds of her eyelids

Her head falls asleep in my hands

Where are we

Together inseparable

Alive alive

He alive she alive

And my head rolls through her dreams.


A Single Smile

A single smile disputes

Each star with the gathering night

A single smile for us both

And the blue of your joyful eyes

Against the mass of night

Finding its flame in my eyes

I have seen by needing to know

The deep night create the day

With no change in our appearance.


Index of First Lines

Translated by A. S. Kline © Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved

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