5.15.2013


The Landscape

I had dreamt of loving. I go on loving but love
Is no longer that bouquet of lilacs and roses
Charging the forest with their fragrance where
A flame rests at the end of branchless pathways.

I had dreamt of loving. I go on loving but love
Is no longer that storm whose lightning imposes
Its funeral pyres on castles, disturbs, distorts,
Lights in departing the parting of the ways.

It’s the flint sparking under my feet at night
The word no dictionary in the world’s translated
The foam in the sea, that cloud there in the sky.

In ageing all becomes rigid and luminous
Avenues without names ropes without knots.
I feel myself grow inflexible with the landscape.



- Robert Desnos (1900-1945)