Paul Éluard
Sixteen More Poems
Translated by A. S. Kline © 2008 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Contents
Your Orange Hair in the Void of the World
Thus, Woman, Principle of Life, Speaker of
the Ideal
The World is Blue As an Orange
I glide on the surface of winds.
I glide on the surface of seas
I have grown sentimental
I no longer know the guide
I no longer move silk over ice
I am diseased flowers and stones
I love the most chinese of nudes
I love the most naked lapses of wings
I am old but here I am beautiful
And the shadow that flows from the deep windows
Each evening spares the dark heart of my stare.
In the void of these heavy panes of silence
Shade where my bare hands seek your image.
The shape of your heart is chimerical
And your love resembles my lost desire.
O sighs of amber, dreams, glances.
But you were not always here. My memory
Is still obscured by seeing your coming
And going. Time consumes words, like love.
The lightness of approach
The tresses of caresses.
Without worry or suspicion
Your eyes confide in what they see
Seen by what they gaze at.
Confidence of crystal
Between two mirrors
At night your eyes are lost
To fuse waking to desire.
The dark form of the sun
The contours of life
Or be truly dazzled
By the fire that fuses all
The flame conveyer of modesties
In flesh in gold that fine gesture
Error is as unknown
As the limits of spring
The temptation prodigious
All touches all travels you
At first it was only a thunder of incense
Which you love the more
The fine praise at four
Lovely motionless nude
Violin mute but palpable
I speak to you of seeing
I will speak to you of your eyes
Be faceless if you wish
Of their unwilling colour
Of luminous stones
Colourless
Before the man you conquer
His blind enthusiasm
Reigns naively like a spring
In the desert
Between the sands of night and the waves of day
Between earth and water
No ripple to erase
No road possible
Between your eyes and the images I see there
Is all of which I think
Myself inderacinable
Like a plant which masses itself
Which simulates rock among other rocks
That I carry for certain
You all entire
All that you gaze at
All
This is a boat
That sails a sweet river
It carries playful women
And patient grain
This is a horse descending the hill
Or perhaps a flame rising
A great barefooted laugh in a wretched heart
An autumn height of soothing verdure
A bird that persists in folding its wings in its nest
A morning that scatters the reddened light
To waken the fields
This is a parasol
And this the dress
Of a lace-maker more seductive than a bouquet
Of the bell-sounds of the rainbow
This thwarts immensity
This has never enough space
Welcome is always elsewhere
With the lightning and the flood
That accompany it
Of medusas and fires
Marvellously obliging
They destroy the scaffolding
Topped by a sad coloured flag
A bounded star
Whose fingers are paralysed
I speak of seeing you
I know you living
All exists all is visible
There is no fleck of night in your eyes
I see by a light exclusively yours.
You sleep the water flowers
You are water ploughed from its depths
You are earth that takes root
And in which all is grounded
You make bubbles of silence in the desert of sound
You sing nocturnal hymns on the arcs of the rainbow
You are everywhere you abolish the roads
You sacrifice time
To the eternal youth of an exact flame
That veils Nature to reproduce her
Woman you show the world a body forever the same
Yours
You are its likeness.
A storm fills the valley
A fish the river
I have made you the size of my solitude
The whole world to hide in
Days and nights to understand
To see no more in your eyes
Than what I think of you
And a world in your image
And days and nights ruled by your eyelids.
No error the words do not lie
They no longer allow you to sing
In the tower of kisses agreement
The madness the love
She her mouth of alliance
All the secrets all the smiles
Or what dress of indulgence
To believe in quite naked.
The wasps flourish greenly
Dawn goes by round her neck
A necklace of windows
You are all the solar joys
All the sun of this earth
On the roads of your beauty.
I sustain you with all my powers
I engrave in rock the star of your powers
Deep furrows where your body’s goodness fruits
I recall your hidden voice your public voice
I smile still at the proud woman
You treat like a beggar
The madness you respect the simplicity you bathe in
And in my head which gently blends with yours with the night
I wonder at the stranger you become
A stranger resembling you resembling everything I love
One that is always new.
And this love heavier than a lake’s ripe fruit
Without laughter or tears lasts forever
One day after another one night after us.
On to the skin of a violin
A singing man a single bird
An agile dancer with his wife
A couple drenched in their youth
The gold of the grass lead of the sky
Separated by azure flames
Of the health-giving dew
The blood glitters the heart rings
A couple the first reflection
And in a cellar of snow
The opulent vine draws
A face with lunar lips
That never slept at night.
In the crowd I saw you
Among the wheat I saw you
Beneath a tree I saw you
At the end of my journeys
In the depths of my torment
At the corner of every smile
Emerging from water and fire
Summer and winter I saw you
All through my house I saw you
In my arms I saw you
In my dreams I saw you
I will never leave you.
If I hear you I’m sure to understand you
If you smile it’s the better to enter me
If you smile I will see the world entire
If I embrace you it’s to widen myself
If we live everything will turn to joy
If I leave you we’ll remember each other
In leaving you we’ll find each other again.
We believe everywhere in our house
Under the soft tree under the black sky
Beneath the roofs at the edge of the fire
In the empty street in broad daylight
In the wandering eyes of the crowd
By the side of the foolish and wise
Among the grown-ups and children
Love’s not mysterious at all
We are the evidence ourselves
In our house lovers believe.
All night I have gazed at you
I’ve all to divine I am certain of shadows
They give me the power
To envelop you
To stir your desire to live
At my motionless core
The power to reveal you
To free you to lose you
Invisible flame in the day.
If you go out the door opens on daylight
If you go out the door to myself stands open.
The unknowing heart
To see if I love
She has confidence she forgets
Under the clouds of her eyelids
Her head falls asleep in my hands
Where are we
Together inseparable
Alive alive
He alive she alive
And my head rolls through her dreams.
Each star with the gathering night
A single smile for us both
And the blue of your joyful eyes
Against the mass of night
Finding its flame in my eyes
I have seen by needing to know
The deep night create the day
With no change in our appearance.
I
have an easy beauty one that is happy.
Your
orange hair in the void of the world
The
world is blue as an orange
We
have created the night I hold your hand I watch
Even
when we sleep we watch over each other
Donkey
or cow, cockerel or horse
If I
speak it’s to hear you more clearly
We
two take each other by the hand
At
dawn I love you I’ve the whole night in my veins