PAUL ÉLUARDShared Nights
I persist in mingling fictions with the most fearful realities. Deserted houses, I
have peopled you with exceptional women, neither fat nor thin, neither blond
nor dark, neither mad nor wise, it doesn’t matter, women as seductive as possi-
ble, through some detail. Useless objects, even the silliness that made you was a
delight to me. Indi√erent beings, I have often listened to you, as you listen to the
sound of waves and the noise of the engines of the boat, deliciously waiting to be
seasick. I’ve picked up the habit of the least ordinary images. I’ve seen them
where they weren’t. I’ve made them ordinary like getting up and going to bed.
City squares, like soap bubbles, have been subject to the rounding of my cheeks,
and the streets to my feet one before the other and the other before the first,
before them both and adding up, the women no longer moved except lying
down, their blouses open to represent the sun. Reason, her head high, her burden
of indi√erence, that lantern with an ant’s head, reason, poor jury-rudder for a
man gone mad, the rudder for the boat... see above.
To find my reasons for living, I’ve tried to undo my reasons for loving you. To
find my reasons for loving you, I’ve not lived well.
—mary ann caws
Of One and Two, of All
I am spectator actor and author
I am the woman her husband and their child
And the first love and the last love
And the furtive passerby and the love abashed.
And again the woman and her bed and gown
And her arms shared and the man’s work
And his love darting forth and the woman’s increase,
Simple and double, my flesh is never in exile.
For where a body begins I take form and conscience
And even when a body is undone in death
I lie down in its crucible, I wed its torment
Its infamy honors my heart and life.
—mary ann caws