The life of the spirit may be fairly
represented in diagram as a large acute-angled triangle divided horizontally into unequal parts with the narrowest segment uppermost. The lower the segment the greater it is in breadth, depth, and area.The whole triangle is moving slowly, almost invisibly forwards and upwards. Where the apex was today the second segment is tomorrow; what today can be understood only by the apex and to the rest of the triangle is an incomprehensible gibberish, forms tomorrow the true thought and feeling of the second segment. At the apex of the top segment stands often one man, and only one. His joyful vision cloaks a vast sorrow. Even those who are nearest to him in sympathy do not understand him. Angrily they abuse him as charlatan or madman. So in his lifetime stood Beethoven, solitary and insulted. Wassily Kandinsky (1866 –1944)


Sunday, January 29, 2012

Paul Éluard (1895- 1952)

                    Liberty



On my notebooks from school
On my desk and the trees
On the sand on the snow
I write your name

On every page read
On all the white sheets
Stone blood paper or ash
I write your name

On the golden images
On the soldier’s weapons
On the crowns of kings                                                   
I write your name



    On the jungle the desert                           
The nests and the bushes                                                    
On the echo of childhood
I write your name
                                                                                               
On the wonder of nights
On the white bread of days
On the seasons engaged
I write your name

On all my blue rags
On the pond mildewed sun
On the lake living moon
I write your name

On the fields the horizon
The wings of the birds
On the windmill of shadows
I write your name


On the foam of the clouds
On the sweat of the storm
On dark insipid rain
I write your name

On the glittering forms
On the bells of colour
On physical truth
       I write your name

On the wakened paths
On the opened ways
On the scattered places
I write your name

On the lamp that gives ligh
On the lamp that is drowned
On my house reunited
I write your name

On the bisected fruit
Of my mirror and room
On my bed’s empty shell
I write your name

On my dog greedy tender
On his listening ears
On his awkward paws
I write your name

On the sill of my door
On familiar things
On the fire’s sacred stream
I write your name

On all flesh that’s in tune
On the brows of my friends
On each hand that extends
I write your name

On the glass of surprises
On lips that attend
High over the silence
I write your name

On my ravaged refuges
On my fallen lighthouses
On the walls of my boredom
I write your name

On passionless absence
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name

On health that’s regained
On danger that’s past
On hope without memories
I write your name

By the power of the word
I regain my life
I was born to know you
And to name you


        
      Absence 


I speak to you over cities
I speak to you over plains

My mouth is against your ear

The two sides of the walls face
my voice which acknowledges you.

I speak to you of eternity.

O cities memories of cities
cities draped with our desires
cities early and late
cities strong cities intimate
stripped of all their makers
their thinkers their phantoms

Landscape ruled by emerald
live living ever-living
the wheat of the sky on our earth
nourishes my voice I dream and cry
I laugh and dream between the flames
between the clusters of sunlight

And over my body your body extends
the layer of its clear mirror.



You Are Everywhere



You get up the water unfolds
You lie down the water expands

You are water diverted from its abysses
You are the earth which takes root
And upon which everything is built

You blow bubbles of silence in the wilderness of noise
You sing nocturnal hymns on the rainbow’s strings
You are everywhere you abolish all roads

Woman you bring into the world a body always the same
Your own

You are its resemblance. 

            
  
                    Ecstasy

I am in front of this feminine land
Like a child in front of the fire
Smiling vaguely with tears in my eyes
In front of this land where all moves in me
Where mirrors mist where mirrors clear
Reflecting two nude bodies season on season

I’ve so many reasons to lose myself
On this road-less earth under horizon-less skies
Good reasons I ignored yesterday
And I’ll never ever forget
Good keys of gazes keys their own daughters
in front of this land where nature is mine

In front of the fire the first fire
Good mistress reason
Identified star
On earth under sky in and out of my heart
Second bud first green leaf
That the sea covers with sails
And the sun finally coming to us

I am in front of this feminine land
Like a branch in the fire. 
Image: Dora Maar

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