Pierre Reverdy

In the morning that comes up behind the roof, in the shelter of the bridge, in the corner of  the cypresses that rise above the wall, a rooster 
has crowed. In the bell tower that rips the air with its shining point, the notes ring out and already the morning din can be heard in the street; the only street that goes from the river to the mountain 
dividing the woods. One looks for some other words but the ideas are always just as dark, just as simple and singularly painful. There is hardly more than the eyes, the open air, the grass and the water in the distance with, around every bend, a well or a cool basin. In the right-hand corner the last house with a larger head at the window. The trees are extremely alive and all those familiar companions walk along the demolished wall that is crushed into the thorns with bursts of laughter. Above the ravine the din augments, swells, and if the car passes on the upper road one no longer knows if it is the flowers or the little bells that are chiming. Under the blazing sun, when the landscape is on fire, the traveler crosses the stream on a very narrow bridge, before a dark hole where the trees line the water that falls asleep in the afternoon. And, against the trembling background of the woods, the motionless man.

The stems of  the sun bent over the eye
The sleeping man
The whole of  the earth
And this head heavy with fear
In the night
This complete hole
Vast
And even so streaming with water
The noise
The peals of  little bells mingled with the
Clinking of glasses
And bursts of laughter
The head moves
On the carpet the body shifts
And turns over the warm spot

In the warm air of the ceiling the footlights of dreams are illuminated. The white walls have curved. The burdened chest breathes confused words. In the mirror, the wind from the south spins, 
carrying leaves and feathers. The window is blocked. The heart is 
almost extinguished among the already cold ashes of the moon — the hands are without shelter ­­­­— as all the trees lying down. In the wind from the desert the needles bend and my hour is past.

Stand up carcass and walk
Nothing new under the yellow sun
The last of  the last of  the louis d’or
The light that separates
under the skins of  time
The lock in the heart that shatters
A thread of  silk
A thread of  lead
A thread of  blood
After these waves of  silence
These tokens of  love in black horsehair
The sky smoother than your eye
The neck twisted with pride
My life in the corridor
From which I see the undulating harvests of death