ROBERT DESNOSNever anyone but you will salute the sea at dawn when tired of wandering
having left the dark-shadowed forests and thistle bushes I shall walk toward
the foam
Never anyone but you will place her hand on my forehead and my eyes
Never anyone but you and I deny falsehood and infidelity
This anchored boat you may cut its rope
Never anyone but you
The eagle prisoner in a cage pecks slowly at the copper bars turned green
What an escape!
It’s Sunday marked by the song of nightingales in the woods of a tender green
the tedium felt by little girls before a cage where a canary flies about while in
the solitary street the sun slowly moves its narrow line across the heated
sidewalk
We shall pass other lines
Never never anyone but you
And I alone like the faded ivy of suburban gardens alone like glass
And you never anyone but you.
—mary ann caws
I’ve Dreamt of You So Often
I’ve dreamt of you so often that you become unreal.
Is there still time to reach this living body and to kiss on its mouth the birth of
the voice so dear to me?
I’ve dreamt of you so often that my arms used to embracing your shadow and
only crossing on my own chest might no longer meet your body’s shape.
And before the real appearance of what has haunted and ruled me for days
and years I would doubtless become a shadow.
Oh the shifts of feeling.
I’ve dreamt of you so often that it is doubtless no longer time for me to wake. I
sleep standing, my body exposed to all the appearances of life and love and you,
who only count today for me, I could touch your forehead and your lips less
easily than any other lips and forehead.
I’ve dreamt of you so often, walked, spoken, slept so often with your phantom
that perhaps all that yet remains for me is to be a phantom among the phantoms
and a hundred times more shadow than the shadow which saunters and will
saunter so gladly over the sundial of your life.
—mary ann caws