Andre Breton

                                          Man Ray. Andre Breton (1930)

ALWAYS FOR THE FIRST TIME

Always for the first time 
Hardly do I know you by sight 
You return at some hour of the night to a house at an angle to my window 
A wholly imaginary house 
It is there that from one second to the next 
In the inviolate darkness 
I anticipate once more the fascinating rift occurring 
The one and only rift 
In the facade and in my heart 
The closer I come to you

In reality 
The more the key sings at the door of the unknown room 
Where you appear alone before me 
At first you coalesce entirely with the brightness 
The elusive angle of a curtain 
It's a field of jasmine I gazed upon at dawn on a road in the vicinity of Grasse 
With the diagonal slant of its girls picking 
Behind them the dark falling wing of the plants stripped bare 
Before them a T-square of dazzling light 
The curtain invisibly raised

In a frenzy all the flowers swarm back in 
It is you at grips with that too long hour never dim enough until sleep 
You as though you could be 
The same except that I shall perhaps never meet you 
You pretend not to know I am watching you 
Marvelously I am no longer sure you know 
You idleness brings tears to my eyes 
A swarm of interpretations surrounds each of your gestures 
It's a honeydew hunt 
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that may well scratch you in the forest 
There are in a shop window in the rue Notre-Dame-de-Lorette 
Two lovely crossed legs caught in long stockings 
Flaring out in the center of a great white clover 
There is a silken ladder rolled out over the ivy 
There is 
By my leaning over the precipice 
Of your presence and your absence in hopeless fusion 
My finding the secret 
Of loving you 

Always for the first time