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 

Adrienne Rich

 

In Those Years

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I

Jean Valentine

 

For S., At The Boat Pond

The newspapers blowing over the street
made her cry, all the birds in New York were crying
because they couldn’t speak Greek,

she took nothing with her and went out onto the street.
The day was obscure, one more
lick of the quiet licking at the door,

her soft black magic, swallowing him, the children,
the world: leaving, everyone leaving,

all turning angels or nothing,
nothing or swimming like paradise children.

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

Rene Char read by Thomas Merton

 

I get too vehement but I like a certain volume ofwacky sound. That is why these days I am reading quite a lot of Rene Char, whom I had not read before. Today, Labor Day, when I get this letter finished, I' ll take off into the woods (I live in the woods anyway) with a book of Rene Char selections and maybe some I4th-cent. German mystic stuff. Char has the wacky oblique eloquence all right. I have two books of selections, same publisher, ten years or so apart: first one has picture of him looking like a champion bicycle racer, the other a picture that ought to have a number under it. The people that write about him try to do so in a hesitant imita- tion of his style, and when they happen to be a bit square the result is very funny. Mustdrivehimoutofhishead. IwouldtranslatesomebutIunderstandthatthere are herds ofpeople doing this now and the rights situation is complicated??2