All Things Lost and Scattered (For Robert Desnos)
The flowing of this magnificent flower
running rivulet of midnight shadows barely glimpsed
like a smile, like yesterday's sadness too
All things lost and scattered
crumbling old skeletons
old rags rotting
hurricanes
tidal-waves
earthquakes
gravediggers
[Oh] one I love!
Bend to my desire.
Those ragged remnants
collapse in a heap.
Drunken kisses
whirl around within my mouth,
stop before my feet.
Long-sought-for
volcanic smoke-rings create my crown.
Take refuge here with me.
Cry out for revolution
while
I and I alone
salute me.
Beautiful strangers, they hear me.
Invoke my voice.
Cry out my name.
Only I cannot hear me.
I will not listen [I only speak]
Trappings of poetic, endless imagining,
my mirage and
my perpetual dream,
If you only knew, or, what amounts to the same thing,
so cruel.
If you only knew a flower dancing
that falls down from above.
The silently foaming sea curls
singing, at that moment
constant torment,
noises of oyster-shells, crushed.
Shooting star glimpsing constellations forming,
a house long under construction.
Secrets caught in the act.
Cement the future: the kisses, the lovers.
If you only knew your image in my mind.
The world. And you, unconquerable.
A really powerful poem, Cecil!