MIRACLE (REVERDY)

Hanging head 

 

              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 nextroom 

Tête penchée

               Cilsrecourbés

Bouche muette

Les lampes sont allumées

Il n’y a plus qu’un nom

                     Quel’on a oublié

La porte se serait ouverte

Et je n’oserais pas entrer

                 Toutce qui se passe derrière

On parle

              Etje peux écouter

Mon sort était en jeu dans la pièceà 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.