Pierre Reverdy

Pier

Pierre Reverdy text, Pablo Picasso artwork, 1948

The Struggles of Words”, 1928

Torment wanders into the light beyond the roof. At midday, without sunlight. The walls are covered with snow, against a gray background. The eye stops and vainly seeks a better path.

They’ve rubbed away the designs that gave life to the crumbling walls. Some words raise themselves affirmatively. And the flood, too high, carries off the shore where the grass smooths the bank into well-combed hair. And while across the bluish rays turbulences whirl and slowly rise, silence falls heavily on the ground, without breaking.

trans. Michael Benedikt

Pierre Reverdy

 

portrait by Alberto Giacometti, 1962

the taste of reality

May 27, 2011 § Leave a comment

He took one step at a time, not knowing where he should place the next. Turning the corner, the wind swept up the dust and its greedy mouth engulfed all of space.

He began to run, hoping to take flight from one moment to the next, but along the gutter the cobblestones were slippery and his flailing arms couldn’t hold him. As he fell he understood that he was heavier than his dream and he loved, then, the weight that brought him down.

Translated by Michael Tweed

Pierre Reverdy

    portrait by Pablo Picasso

 

late in life

June 7, 2011 § Leave a comment

I am callous
I am tender
And I have wasted my time
Dreaming without sleeping
Sleeping while walking
Everywhere I’ve gone
I’ve found myself absent
I belong nowhere
Except the void
But I carry hidden high up in my bowels
At the spot where lightning has too often struck
A heart where each word has left its mark
And where my life trickles away with the slightest movement

(from La liberté des mers)

Pierre Reverdy

always there

June 13, 2011 § Leave a comment

I must no longer see myself and must forget
To speak to people whom I do not know
To shout without being heard
For no reason all alone
I know everyone and each of your steps
I would like to talk but no one listens
Heads and eyes turn away from me
Towards the night
My head is a ball full and heavy
Rustling as it rolls along the ground

Faraway
Nothing behind me nothing ahead
In the void where I descend
A few strong drafts
Swirl around me
Cruel and cold
From doors left ajar
Upon yet-to-be forgotten memories
The world like a pendulum has come to a standstill
People suspended for all eternity
An aviator descends like a spider by a thread

Relieved everyone dances
Between heaven and earth
But a ray of light comes
From the lamp that you forgot to turn off
In the stairwell
Ah it’s not over
Oblivion is not complete
I must still learn to know myself

Pierre Reverdy

Late at Night

[translation by Kenneth Rexroth]

The color which night decomposes
The table where they sit
In its glass chimney
The lamp is a heart emptying itself
It is another year
A new wrinkle
Would you have thought of it
The window throws a blue square
The door is more familiar
A separation
Remorse and crime
Goodbye I am falling
Gently bending arms take me
Out of the corner of my eye I can see them all drinking
I don’t dare move
They sit there
The table is round
And so is my memory
I remember everybody

Even those who are gone 

Pierre Reverdy

 

                                        Reverdy, Picasso, Cocteau, Brassai

                                    Atelier de Picasso, Rue Des Grandes Augustins, Paris, 1944

                                                                photograph by Brassai

Outside

Mask that weeps between two tree branches
A carnival evening is quenching 
tears that were streaming from its stony eyelids
tears from laughing and from bitterness and from regrets

Midnight
it’s all retouched
A new day begins
A drunkard comes to 
Tells his story to the doorways on the street
Sad story
With him a morning light

It’s raining and your eyelids glitter
The sneezing trees sprinkle the pavement
And by the caves of your nose I watch the moon pass over

The streak of clouds races on the faded sky
To all those who cling against lamp posts 
The illusion will be sweet

And dear your austere face
Mask
Smiles thinking of the dismal morrow

Passing along the clacking pavement 
Avoiding the street where shadows grow thick
High up a light gleams 
It’s so tranquil
The lodging that draws you on and awaits you where it is
The night doesn’t care about anything
          But the sky 
Perhaps it’s an empty apartment for you

            version by Frank O'Hara 

Pierre Reverdy

 Just for Now

Life it’s simple it’s great
The clear sun rings a sweet noise
The song of the bells has died away
The morning passes the light all through
My head is a re-flooded shell 
And the chamber I inhabit is finally cleared 

A lone ray suffices 
A single peal of laughter
My joy which shakes the house 
Restrains those who wish to die
With the very notes of its song

I sing false 
Ah but isn’t it droll
My mouth wide to all the winds
Launches everywhere its mad notes
Which depart I don’t know how
To fly towards the ears of others

Listen I’m not crazy
I’m laughing at the foot of the stairway
Before the great wide open door 
In the squandered sunshine 
At the wall midst the vines the greens 
And my arms are stretched towards you

It’s today that I love you

Pierre Reverdy

 

photograph by Brassai, 1937

Live Flesh

TRANSLATED BY LYDIA DAVIS

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

Pierre Reverdy

translation by Kenneth Rexroth, art by

Juan Gris

A Lot of People

Over there is only a black hole

      Beyond the gate a laughing head

And in dust the noise died away

      Cloud

      Chiaroscuro

          Stop breathing

All the birds are dead

          The sun has burst

Blood flows 

In the water where his eyes were drowning

Pierre Reverdy

 

clock ::

translated by lydia davis

    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.

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Pierre Reverdy

 

    portrait by Brassai, 1932

from painted stars (Étoiles peintes, 1921)

Movement on the horizon

The horsemen keep to the road, and in profile. One cannot tell any more how many. Against the night that blocks the way, between the river and the bridge, a weeping spring, a tree that follows you. You could watch the passing crowd and it wouldn’t see you. It’s a veritable army on the march, or else a dream, a background of a painting on a cloud. The child cries or sleeps. It watches or dreams. All these armies obstruct the sky. The earth shakes. The horses glide along the water; the cortège glides, too, in the water that washes away all these colors, all these tears.

Translation by Dan Bellm

Max Weber

Pierre Reverdy

 

            painting by Amedio Modigliani

At the Edge of Time

TRANSLATED BY LYDIA DAVIS

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

Guillaume Apollinaire

 

The Little Car

The 31st day of August 1914

I left Deauville a little before midnight

In Rouveyre’s little car

 

Counting his driver there were three of us

 

We said good-bye to an entire epoch

Furious giants were rising over Europe

Eagles were leaving their aeries expecting the sun

Voracious fish were rising from the depths

Populations were rushing to know each other intimately

The dead were trembling with fear in their dark dwellings

 

The dogs were barking toward over there where the frontier is

I went bearing within me all those armies fighting

I felt them rise up in me and spread out over the countries they wound through

With the forests the happy villages of Belgium

Francorchamps with l’Eau Rouge and the mineral springs

Region the invasions always come through

Railway arteries where those who were going off to die

Saluted one last time this colorful life

Deep oceans where monsters were moving

In old shipwrecked hulks

Unimaginable heights where men fight

Higher than the eagle soars

There men fight men

And suddenly fall like shooting stars

I felt in myself new and totally capable beings

Build and organize a new universe

A merchant of amazing opulence and astounding size

Was laying out an extraordinary display

And gigantic shepherds were leading

Great silent flocks that were grazing on words

With every dog on the road barking at them

 

 

 

O

dark

departure

when our

three head

lights were

d y i n g

O

ten

der

pre-

war

night

O

vil

lages

with

h i n g  t h e  r u s

 

BLACKSMITHS ORDERED TO GO

 

o

v  e  r

t o  LISIEUX

the  very

b l u

e

 

or to

 

o

v  e  r

s  a  i  l  l  e

s  the  go

l d

 

 

And when having passed that afternoon

Through Fontainbleau

We arrived in Paris

Just as the mobilization posters were going up

 

We understood my buddy and I

That the little car had taken us into a New epoch

And although we were both grown men

We had just been born

translation by Ron Padgett from Zone

Max Jacob

  

Poem in a Mode that Isn't Mine 

to you, Rimbaud

My horse tripped over the semiquavers! The notes splatter up to the green sky of my soul: the eighth sky!

Apollo was a doctor and me I’m a pianist of the heart, if not in fact. It would be necessary, with the flats and all the bars, to unload the scribbled steamers, to collect the tiny battle flags to compose some canticles.

The minuscule, it’s huge! Whoever conceived Napoleon as an insect between two branches of a tree, who painted him a nose too large in watercolor, who rendered his court with shades too tender, wasn’t he greater than Napoleon himself, o Ataman Prajapati!

The minuscule, it’s the note!

Man bears upon himself photographs of his ancestors like Napoleon bore God, o Spinoza! Me, my ancestors, these are the notes of harps. God had conceived St. Helena and the sea between two branches of a tree. My black horse has a good eye, though albino, but he tripped on the harp notes.