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
NOTE: When I was in high school in Washington, Connecticut, waking up to all sorts of literature and visual art, principally through the lens of Cubism, I discovered the poetry of Pierre Reverdy, which has stayed with me as a touchstone. I knew French well enough by that time to be able to read the original poetry, but I also read Reverdy in translation, initially in Kenneth Rexroth's book, Pierre Reverdy, Selected Poems, which, as I recall, had a Juan Gris guitar drawing on its cover. This poem, Miracle, haunted me back then. When I spent the summer in France in 1971, wandering around bookstores and art galleries much of the time, and I first experienced Reverdy in situ, it affected me strongly and gave me the feeling that my thoughts were real and actually connected up to an external reality. The three illustrations included here, Portrait of Violette Heymann (1910), The Cyclops (1914), and Self-Portrait (1880), are by Odilon Redon.
.jpg)
