Venice masks

Friday, 20 June 2014

The Absence - Paul Éluard

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.

Paul Éluard (1895 – 1952) France
Translated by A. S. Kline
Source: Poets of Modernity Translations into English by A. S. Kline

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