Pierre Reverdy

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 All those greedy hands kneading loaves of smoke Heavier than the pillars of  the universe Heads empty Hearts bare Hands scented Tentacles of  the monkeys who aim at the clouds Among the wrinkles of  these grimaces A straight line tightens A nerve twists The sea sated Love The bitter smile of  death

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.

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 At the slipping feet of  the animal It’s that they’re waiting For the summons of the shock And the signal of  the eyelid The ray relaxes Sleep Light And what is left shines at the edge of  the white rock

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.