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

 

André Breton, “Vigilance” (excerpt), ca. 1931, tr. Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow, from André 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.