A cause that may have perished, buried deep in all those anthems,
Does it resemble our image? Is it of bone with a fleshy crust?
Most likely not, but if there is, it’s indifferent to us,
To our virtues and our laws. So you can rid your knees of dust!
You captive of a countryside in perpetual degradation,
It’s to the song of birds, the song of harvests and of streams
That there weaves itself around your limbs this garment of permission,
This robe you wear at midnight and it rings and chimes like chains,
Cold as the north and hot as death, and long as death extends:
We unfasten it, Calixto, in a dream that shadows your dreams.
We too are captives of this universe tumbling down,
Condemned to smile at something if we’re ignorant about it,
We’ll smile at the angel as we grapple him, locked in strife,
A phantom illusory angel, a liar and a braggart,
Who’ll surely win, but who will never know the laurel crown,
So triumphant over the murderer was just one minute of life.
Then let him be the stupid corpse, clutching the dagger still,
With its rust composing a face for him, and a mask with blood on it:
Dumb sphinx with the head of a donkey, abandoned on the hill,
The carcase of a scarecrow, doubled up in a raging fit.
Don’t touch him, the worms on their own will give him life and fire and cinders;
He’ll only revive if we try to fight them off, as his defenders.
Not a word, above all! To speak to him would be silly, a waste of breath.
But the soft earth bears his footprint, full of water, in which the sky
Is split apart by your image, Calixto, like an eye.
The bird comes to drink from its flower-cup the light and shade together,
The wind carries off and disperses the last stale smell of death,
The ground stirs like a belly, sensing the onset of showery weather.
YOU REACH THE LABYRINTH where shadows err,
To mark its walls with murals of the past.
Life, dream, oblivion, by darkness spaced,
Shall live again in secret signs bizarre.
I reach the labyrinth. Thick as a cable
The old thread formed a knot, and then it tore.
Its ends go rolling on, indomitable.
All’s quiet. I feel the fanfare surge, from far.
You reach the labyrinth. Your step’s composed,
You pass through all the doorways unopposed.
In its own myth, your entity disperses.
I reach the labyrinth, to shed my senses.
I chose the flow, but never chose its courses.
Before I hear the fanfare, it has ended.
POISED BY THE CHASM where you’ll disappear,
Contemplate once again the rose, and hear
That song you used to sing at your own door:
Live with yourself a moment, as before.
Then to oblivion you’ll pass away.
Rejoin your ancestors: pass with the seasons,
Lost in the planet and its maturations.
Don’t hope to be reborn, some future day.
A shooting-star, in depths of time, rejoins
A mass of glowing auras, twilights, dawns,
Beside a stream, where you learned not to be.
The stuff of you is conscious, self-aware;
The echo of ‘I love you’ dies away;
Pure motion stirs no spirit, any more.
RIVER, WE LEAVE YOU and forswear
Our false reflection: we abjure
Our image that you wash and tear:
A stranger and a foreigner,
You leave it on your pebbly shore.
When sleeping in the open air,
We’ll meet again that false portrayal
Resembling us in such detail.
We’re paddling in the river Saône
Bridges and breezes are at hand
And here is Lyon and here’s the Rhône
Here’s the moon sitting on her throne –
She dwells in state in the Levant
And turns the pylon-lanterns down
The better to attract Don Juan
To the two rivers’ meeting-point.
This night is matrimonial.
Across the world they drink their wine
And hear the coachmen’s wheels that roll
And the gigantic hounds that howl
In depths of forest and ravine.
The gold that chimed to make a deal
Shines from the chandeliers, reflects
In necklaces on ladies’ necks.
A couple weds in open air.
On a remote and secret lawn
The violinists’ melody
Makes jealous women start to cry.
All drink, but no-one knows for whom
The stitching hours of night prepare
A fevered, amorous wedding-gown
And the death-shroud of coming dawn.
IT IS SAID that in great mystery, at midnight, near a spring
A young man of full virtue
Will undress a young girl whose grace and modesty match the ardour of her desire;
That a couple, in the morning, will be woken
By the scent of the forest and the song of birds;
That they will live out a long and inalterable youth.
It is said they will be the perfect couple,
That the woman will bear, in joy, children in their image,
That their happiness will not yield to boredom, nor their desire to weariness,
That anyone would have wished to be born to such a father and such a mother
And to live the years that will follow this marriage.
It is said (but it is not certain) that they have just this moment exchanged their first kiss.
It is said (and with certainty) that they are children of earth
That their virtues, thoughts and desires know only what is earth,
That they will taste all fruits without danger.
And you, Calixto, star of earth, hardly visible in the light,
You continue to be a guiding-mark on our certain road to an uncertain goal.
But our gaze, which we fix on you, flies loose and breaks the thread that should join you to us and us to you.
YOU SCARPER THOUGH, you cut and run
And in the penitential clink
The last, the vast night-night’s begun,
Puts up a black more black than ink
While loudly tipping us the wink
To dump the swag, chuck in the fun.
That’s bully, but hang on a mo,
Last train, last station, rapido,
‘The Canny Robert’. ‘There I go!’
Re-live the shipwrecks! Sure to save,
Time after time, the stormy wave,
Which brought our hero to a place
Beyond the reach of nights and days:
Land of the wise. He gave the key
To fools, to find, quite possibly,
Somewhere no bolts and bars would be.
When sleeping in the open air,
O star Calixto, mother-bear,
He took the hedgerow path towards
A waking dawn that frees him where
There are no boats, nor even ports,
When sleeping in the open air,
Aware again of weight, aware
Of what created, put him there,
When sleeping in the open air,
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La terre, and nothing else, la terre…
CE CŒUR QUI HAÏSSAIT LA GUERRE
LE LEGS
Et voici, Père Hugo, ton nom sur les murailles!
Tu peux te retourner au fond du Panthéon
Pour savoir qui a fait cela. Qui l’a fait? On!
On c’est Hitler, on c’est Goebbels… C’est la racaille,
Un Laval, un Pétain, un Bonnard, un Brinon,
Ceux qui savent trahir et ceux qui font ripaille,
Ceux qui sont destinés aux justes représailles
Et cela ne fait pas un grand nombre de noms.
Ces gens de peu d’esprit et de faible culture
Ont besoin d’alibis dans leur sale aventure.
Ils ont dit: «Le bonhomme est mort. Il est dompté.»
Oui, le bonhomme est mort. Mais par-devant notaire
Il a bien précisé quel legs il voulait faire:
Le notaire a nom: France, et le legs: Liberté.
THIS HEART WHICH HATED WAR
THE LEGACY
Hugo! So here’s your name on every wall!
Deep in the Pantheon, turn in your grave,
And ask: who’s done this? Hitler! Goebbels! They’ve
Done it, the guttersnipes: Pétain, Laval,
Bonnard, Brinon: accomplished traitors all,
High on the hog. They’ve done it, and they must
Face retribution, merciless and just;
And there are not that many names at all.
These mindless and uncultured men have made
A smokescreen for their filthy escapade:
‘The fellow’s dead and gone,’ apparently.
The fellow’s dead. Yet his bequest is clear:
His legacy is signed and proven here,
Witnessed by France; we call it Liberty.
CE CŒUR QUI HAÏSSAIT LA GUERRE
Ce cœur qui haïssait la guerre voilà qu’il bat pour le combat et la bataille!
Ce cœur qui ne battait qu’au rythme des marées, à celui des saisons, à celui des heures du jour et de la nuit,
Voilà qu’il se gonfle et qu’il envoie dans les veines un sang brûlant de salpêtre et de haine
Et qu’il mène un tel bruit dans la cervelle que les oreilles en sifflent
Et qu’il n’est pas possible que ce bruit ne se répande pas dans la ville et la campagne
Comme le son d’une cloche appelant à l’émeute et au combat.
Écoutez, je l’entends qui me revient renvoyé par les échos.
Mais non, c’est le bruit d’autres cœurs, de millions d’autres cœurs battant comme le mien à travers la France.
Ils battent au même rythme pour la même besogne tous ces cœurs,
Leur bruit est celui de la mer à l’assaut des falaises
Et tout ce sang porte dans des millions de cervelles un même mot d’ordre:
Révolte contre Hitler et mort à ses partisans!
Pourtant ce cœur haïssait la guerre et battait au rythme des saisons,
Mais un seul mot: Liberté a suffi à réveiller les vieilles colères
Et des millions de Français se préparent dans l’ombre à la besogne que l’aube proche leur imposera.
Car ces cœurs qui haïssaient la guerre battaient pour la liberté au rythme même des saisons et des marées, du jour et de la nuit.
THIS HEART WHICH HATED WAR
This heart which hated war, see now, it beats for combat and battle!
This heart that once beat only to the rhythm of the tides, seasons, hours of day and night,
See now, it swells up and sends into the veins a blood burning with saltpetre and hate
And brings to the brain a noise to make the ears whistle
And this noise cannot but spread through city and country,
Like the sound of a tocsin that summons to uprising and combat.
Listen, I hear it come back to me, sent by the echoes.
No, it is the sound of other hearts, millions of other hearts beating like mine across France.
All these hearts are beating to the same rhythm from the same need,
Their sound is that of the sea pounding the cliffs
And all this blood carries into millions of brains the same watchword:
Revolt against Hitler and death to his followers!
This heart hated war, its beat was to the rhythm of the seasons,
But a single word: Liberty was enough to awaken the old fires of anger
And millions of Frenchmen are preparing in the shadows for the demands the coming dawn will impose.
For these hearts that hated war were beating for liberty to the very rhythm of the seasons, the tides, day and night.
SI, COMME AUX VENTS DÉSIGNÉS PAR LA ROSE
Si, comme aux vents désignés par la rose
Il est un sens à l’espace et au temps,
S’ils en ont un ils en ont mille et plus
Et tout autant s’ils n’en possèdent pas.
Or qui de nous n’imagine ou pressent,
Ombres vaguant hors des géométries,
Des univers échappant à nos sens?
Au carrefour de routes en obliques
Nous écoutons s’éteindre un son de cor,
Toujours renaissant, toujours identique.
Cette vision du ciel et de la rose
Elle s’absorbe et se dissout dans l’air
Comme les sons dont frémit notre chair
Ou les lueurs sous nos paupières closes.
Nous nous heurtons à d’autres univers
Sans les sentir, les voir ou les entendre
Au creux été, aux cimes de l’hiver,
D’autres saisons sur nous tombent en cendre.
Tandis qu’aux vents désignés par la rose
Claque la porte et claquent les drapeaux,
Gonfle la voile et sans visible cause
Une présence absurde à nous s’impose
Matérielle, indifférente et sans repos.
THE WINDS AROUND THE COMPASS-ROSE
The winds around the compass-rose
Imply a sense in time and space;
One sense entails a thousand plus,
Even no sense can mean no less.
We all imagine or we sense
Shades roaming free of geometries,
Worlds that escape our vigilance.
We hear a dying bugle-horn
At meetings of the slanting ways,
Always the same, always reborn.
This vision of the sky, the rose,
Dissolves and merges in the breeze
Like sounds that shake us at the knees,
Or glaring light when eyelids close.
To other worlds we wander off
That no-one senses, sees or hears.
At winter peaks, at summer trough,
Seasons fall ashen round our ears.
While the winds on the compass-rose
Swell out the sails, flap flags and doors,
An absurd presence will impose
On us, for which we see no cause:
Uncaring, blunt, without repose.
LE VEILLEUR DU PONT-AU-CHANGE
Je suis le veilleur de la rue de Flandre,
Je veille tandis que dort Paris.
Vers le nord un incendie lointain rougeoie dans la nuit.
J’entends passer des avions au-dessus de la ville.
Je suis le veilleur du Point-du-Jour.
La Seine se love dans l’ombre, derrière le viaduc d’Auteuil,
Sous vingt-trois ponts à travers Paris.
Vers l’ouest j’entends des explosions.
Je suis le veilleur de la Porte Dorée.
Autour du donjon le bois de Vincennes épaissit ses ténèbres.
J’ai entendu des cris dans la direction de Créteil
Et des trains roulent vers l’est avec un sillage de chants de révolte.
Je suis le veilleur de la Poterne des Peupliers.
Le vent du sud m’apporte une fumée âcre,
Des rumeurs incertaines et des râles
Qui se dissolvent, quelque part, dans Plaisance ou Vaugirard.
Au sud, au nord, à l’est, à l’ouest,
Ce ne sont que fracas de guerre convergeant vers Paris.
Je suis le veilleur du Pont-au-Change
Veillant au cœur de Paris, dans la rumeur grandissante
Où je reconnais les cauchemars paniques de l’ennemi,
Les cris de victoire de nos amis et ceux des Français,
Les cris de souffrance de nos frères torturés par les Allemands d’Hitler.
Surrealist, Lover, Resistant Page 42
