ANDRÉ BRETONUnder the fingernails of absence and presence in
collusion
All the looms are withering just a bit of perfumed
lace
A shell of lace remains in a perfect breast shape
Now I touch nothing but the heart of things I hold the thread
—mary ann caws
Always for the First Time
Always for the first time
I scarcely know you when I see you
You return sometime in the night
to a house at an angle to my window
A wholly imaginary house
From one second to the next
There in the complete darkness
I wait for the strange rift to recur the
unique rift
In the façade and in my heart
The nearer I come to you
In reality
The louder the key sings in the door of the unknown room
Where you appear alone before me
First you merge with the brightness
The fleeting angle of a curtain
A jasmine field I gazed on at dawn on a road
near Grasse
The jasmine-pickers bending over on a slant
Behind them the dark profile of plants
stripped bare
Before them the dazzling light
The curtain invisibly raised
In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back
You facing this long hour never dim enough
until sleep
You as if you could be
The same except I may never
meet you
You pretend not to know I’m watching you
Marvellously I’m no longer sure you know it