MIRACLE (PIERRE REVERDY)

      Eyelashes curled 

Mouth silent 

The lights go on

There is nothing there but a name 

     Which has been forgotten 

If the door opens

I won’t dare go in 

      Everything happens back there 

They talk

        And I listen 

My fate is at stake in the next room 

Tête penchée

               Cils recourbés

Bouche muette
Les lampes sont allumées

Il n’y a plus qu’un nom

        Que l’on a oublié

La porte se serait ouverte

Et je n’oserais pas entrer

       Tout ce qui se passe derrière

On parle

          Et je peux écouter

Mon sort était en jeu 

          dans la pièce à côté

Translation by Kenneth Rexroth 

Jackie Lomax: Is This What You Want? (Link)

 

LOVE THEY KEPT CRYING (RENGA)

Love they kept crying love swiftness

already at rest     love the unmoving

in full flight --- the gravity of speed:

Half of the water grew dark     half

of the air     a black round entered the water

and night was half a lake:

And love, a command no more, to each one

the way lies clear through the comity of vine, of stone:

(through places that are years, before lit-up show windows

which are dialogues split-off from montage:  you return, once

     more, by the rue du

Dragon, you come down your stairs: )

From Renga, A Chain of Poems by Octavio Paz, Jacques Roubaud, Eduardo Sanguinetti, Charles Tomlinson (translations by Charles Tomlinson).  New York, George Braziller, 1971.

Top illustration:  Dora Maar, The Pretender, Photo-collage, 1936.

Bottom illustration: Eugene Atget, Staircase, ca. 1900-1910.

La Chansonette

        Planning anything, with the sole, small, chance exception of total confusion, was impossible.  

        Idea kleptomania and virtual murder seethed from the third and fourth floors.

        Pigs I like enormously.  For that reason, I won't say the malefactors were "raised in a sty." 

        I'm trying to communicate clearly here in order to avoid total confusion, which I abhor in the same way nature abhors a vacuum.

Key:

1. Eugène Atget, Impasse de la Baudorie, Rue de Venise, Paris, 1890. Vintage albumen print, 22.2 x 17.9 cms.

2. Eugène Atget, Ancien Hotel de Jumilhac 12, rue de l'Abbe Gregoire, 1905. Vintage albumen print, 21.8 x 17.5 cms

3.  La Chansonette -- Yves Montand performance at l'Olympia, Paris (Link)