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

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