- André Breton
Someone
just died but I’m still alive and yet I don’t have a soul anymore. All I
have left is a transparent body inside of which transparent doves hurl
themselves on a transparent dagger held by a transparent hand. I see
struggle in all its beauty, real struggle which nothing can measure,
just before the last star comes out. The rented body I live in like a
hut detests the soul I had which floats in the distance. It’s time to
put an end to that famous dualism for which I’ve been so much
reproached. Gone are the days when eyes without light and rings drew
sediment from pools of color. There’s neither red nor blue anymore.
Unanimous red-blue fades away in turn like a robin redbreast in the
hedges of inattention. Someone just died,—not you or I or they exactly,
but all of us, except me who survives by a variety of means: I’m still
cold for example. That’s enough. A match! A match! Or how about some
rocks so I can split them, or some birds so I can follow them, or some
corsets so I can tighten them around dead women’s waists, so they’ll
come back to life and love me, with their exhausting hair, their
disheveled glances! A match, so no one dies for brandied plums, a match
so the Italian straw hat can be more than a play! Hey, lawn! Hey, rain! I’m
the unreal breath of this garden. The black crown resting on my head is
a cry of migrating crows because up till now there have only been those
who were buried alive, and only a few of them, and here I am the first aerated dead man.
But I have a body so I can stop doing myself in, so I can force
reptiles to admire me. Bloody hands, misteltoe eyes, a mouth of dried
leaves and glass (the dried leaves move under the glass; they’re not as
red as one would think, when indifference exposes its voracious
methods), hands to gather you, miniscule thyme of my dreams, rosemary of
my extreme pallor. I don’t have a shadow anymore, either. Ah my shadow,
my dear shadow. I should write a long letter to the shadow I lost. I’d
begin it My Dear Shadow. Shadow, my darling. You see. There’s no more
sun. There’s only one tropic left out of two. There’s only one man left
in a thousand. There’s only one woman left in the absence of thought
that characterizes in pure black this cursed era. That woman holds a
bouquet of everlastings shaped like my blood.
from: Andre Breton: Selections. Copyright 2003.
No comments:
Post a Comment