The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

LOUIS ARAGON

Except
His hand indicates the wall where love

Is being made in the room
next door

All the rest o kiss perpetual kiss
Night and day day and night this long halt of the clock
And lip upon lip and the linked breathing
And the life beneath Real the bed yet
Much less real than the moment fixed upon the canvas
The bed is only a pleonasm to the embrace to time’s continuance

Life’s hugeness always a little like the cinema
Of those days where the piano with a little tune forgives
The words which are not said

The hall listens with all its eyes to the refrain
And this bouquet of fingers to say It is beautiful

Are we not still in the age of silent films
Half a century later it’s still the same music
Same silence in the public gardens on the benches

At the corners of the streets
In the dark bellies of the houses
Alone nothing but them alone never weary of their embrace
Trembling held in each other’s arms and legs
The lovers of 1905

May their pleasure be eternal

—edward lucie-smith