ANDRÉ BRETONYour idleness fills my eyes with tears
A nimbus of meanings surrounds each of
your gestures
Like a honeydew hunt
There are rocking-chairs on a bridge there are branches that might scratch you
in the forest
In a window on the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette
Two lovely crossed legs are caught in long stockings
Flaring out in the centre of a great white clover
There is a silk ladder unrolled across the ivy
There is
That leaning over the precipice
Of the hopeless fusion of your presence and absence
I have found the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time
—mary ann caws
They Tell Me That Over There
They tell me that over there the beaches are black
From the lava running to the sea
Stretched out at the foot of a great peak smoking with snow
Under a second sun of wild canaries
So what is this far-o√ land
Seeming to take its light from your life
It trembles very real at the tip of your lashes
Sweet to your carnation like an intangible linen
Freshly pulled from the half-open trunk of the ages
Behind you
Casting its last sombre fires between your legs
The earth of the lost paradise
Glass of shadows mirror of love
And lower towards your arms opening
On the proof by springtime
of afterwards
Of evil’s not existing
All the flowering appletree of the sea
—mary ann caws