Monday, October 7, 2013

EYES WIDE SHUT








In Paris the Saint-Jacques Tower tottering
Like a sunflower
Sometimes bumps its forehead against the Seine and its shadow
glides
    Imperceptibly among the tugboats
At that moment on tiptoe in my sleep
I head for the room where I am lying
And I set it on fire
So that nothing survives of the consent torn from me
Then the furniture makes room for animals the same size that watch
    me like a brother 




Lions in whose manes the chairs are finally burnt up
Dogfish whose white bellies blend with the last shiver of the
bedsheets
At the hour of love and blue eyelids
Next I see myself burning I see that solemn hiding-place of nothings
That was my body 
Raked by the patient beaks of the ibises of fire
When it’s all over invisible I board the ark
 




AndrĂ© Breton, “Vigilance” (excerpt), ca. 1931, tr. Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow, from AndrĂ© Breton – Selections, ed. Mark Polizzotti, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2003.


Last night in bed, we talked about Automatic Writing.  I can’t remember the last time we did that.



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