ANDRÉ BRETONFree Union
My love whose hair is woodfire
Her thoughts heat lightning
Her waist an hourglass
My love an otter in the tiger’s jaws
Her mouth a rosette bouquet of stars of the highest magnitude
Her teeth footprints of white mice on white earth
Her tongue smooth as amber and as glass
My love her tongue a sacred host stabbed through
Her tongue a doll whose eyes close and open
Her tongue a fantastic stone
Each eyelash traced by a child’s hand
Her eyebrows the edge of a swallow’s nest
My love her temples slates on a greenhouse roof
And their misted panes
My love whose shoulders are champagne
And the dolphin heads of a fountain under ice
My love her wrists thin as matchsticks
Whose fingers are chance and the ace of hearts
Whose fingers are mowed hay
My love with marble and beechnut beneath her arms
Of Midsummer night
Of privet and the nests of angel fish
Whose arms are sea foam and river locks
And the mingling of wheat and mill
My love whose legs are fireworks
Moving like clockwork and despair
My love her calves of elder tree marrow
My love whose feet are initial letters
Are key rings and sparrows drinking
My love her neck pearled with barley
My love her throat of a golden valley
Rendez-vous in the torrent’s very bed
Her breasts of night
My love her breasts molehills beneath the sea
Crucibles of rubies
Spectre of the dew-sparkled rose
My love whose belly unfurls the fan of every day
Its giant claws
Whose back is a bird’s vertical flight
Whose back is quicksilver