The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

(WallPaper) #1
PIERRE REVERDY

The evening was coming down and from far away
Slowly the song was leaving our memories behind
Were we supposed to smile or believe it
We were waiting
And watching
Everything happening elsewhere was in our minds.
—patricia terry


The Web


A hand, with a rhythmic and thoughtless motion,
was throwing its five fingers up towards the ceiling
where fantastic shadows were dancing.
A hand detached from its arm, a free hand,
illumined from below by the glow of the hearth—
and that innocent empty head smiling at the spider
setting forth in the night its useless masterpiece.
—mary ann caws and patricia terry


Breath


It is snowing on my roof and on the trees. The wall and the garden are white,
the path black, and the house has given way without a sound. It is snowing.
—mary ann caws and patricia terry


The Head Filled with Beauty


In the gilded abyss, crimson, frozen, gilded, the abyss where sorrow shelters,
the twisting whirlwinds entice my boiling blood into the slime, into the tortuous
flames of my trunk. Sadness in moiré pattern is swallowed up in the heart’s
tender crevasses. Obscure and complicated accidents take place, impossible to
describe. And nevertheless the spirit of order, the even spirit, the spirit common
to all despairs is questioning. Oh, as you walk through life, between the flowering
and thorn-filled shrubs of life, among the dead leaves, the outlines of triumph,
the helpless appeals, the bronze dust sweepings, the dry powder of hopes, the
blackened embers of fame, and the revolt, you would never desire an end any-
where, ever again. You, unquenchable source of blood. You, disaster intense with
gleams which no surging spring, no cooling glacier will ever try to extinguish
with its sap. You, light. You, sinuosity of buried love, hiding. You, ornament of
heavens nailed upon the pilings of the infinite. Ceiling of contradictory ideas.
Vertiginous balance of enemy forces. Paths confused in the fray of hair. You,
gentleness and hatred—horizon chipped away, pure line of indi√erence and

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