| |
I
CHANSON DE BLACKBOULÉ
JUST as the passing wind | |
| catches the word of the glittering leaves, | |
| I’d make your curled lips tingle | |
| with a swift kiss—should you let me. | |
| Instead, | 5 |
| you see me bent and doubled up | |
| by silence | |
| in silence | |
| and my words are harsh, | |
| sounds of a body that breaks. | 10 |
| |
| You turn your wide eyes, | |
| ever bewildered, | |
| bewildered as the sun when it glances | |
| its first glance on the lake, at dawn, | |
| you see all things with newness, | 15 |
| you see all, | |
| all but my love. | |
| Well, that’s how it goes, eh, Annie? | |
| All but my clumsy, self-accursed love | |
| under my bent and folded | 20 |
| body, | |
| body awe-full of raptures, | |
| awe-full of the tree-tops and leaves skipping, snapping | |
| under those clouds,— | |
| clouds that the moon is kissing | 25 |
| over my silent head. | |
| That’s how things go and that’s | |
| precisely how things should go— | |
| that’s how the wind presses our cheeks a moment | |
| and slips | 30 |
| behind us away, it’s how | |
| it stretches a ribbon over our eyelids | |
| and pulls it from behind, it’s my heels pounding the side-walk; | |
| it’s how things go, the way | |
| they happen, | 35 |
| the morning, the evening and night— | |
| how they come and they go and are going | |
| and linger, | |
| it’s love that comes and love | |
| that does not come. | 40 |
| |
| I’ll say no hands | |
| will know your hands as mine do, | |
| your hands that are soft as the grass is. | |
| But there’s no answer coming | |
| to me, so | 45 |
| don’t worry, Annie. | |
| Don’t worry, wide round eyes. | |
| Do turn around and | |
| around, wide round eyes, | |
| and soft slender hands do whisper | 50 |
| of easy happiness and of a young | |
| motherliness, | |
| and you, dear child, do say, | |
| do say and repeat, | |
| do repeat most vigorously | 55 |
| that you don’t love me. | |
| I have today again uncovered the sky and have found it | |
| ever so cool and ever so new, under. | |
| I wait for no answer, and no thing | |
| to ask, and no thing | 60 |
| to say, besides what you know and I know | |
| and that which | |
| to the end of days | |
| will have one and an only | |
| meaning | 65 |
| and no meaning | |
| and all meanings and | |
| the | |
| meaning. | |
| |
II
KISS
You think you can leave the matter to your lips | 70 |
| and they don’t work right | |
| and then | |
| it’s two deadmen shaking hands | |
| saying “Howdydo Sir?” | |
| |
III
SERENADE
Come on, don’t be afraid you’ll spoil me | 75 |
| if you light the gas in your room | |
| and show me | |
| that you have heard my cries. | |
| |
| Are you so poor in kisses | |
| that you’re so stingy with them; | 80 |
| and is your heart so ravaged | |
| that you won’t let me pick there | |
| one or two flowers?… | |
| Oh, never mind what I’ll do with them! | |
| I’m going to teach you yet | 85 |
| what rapture is. | |
| |
| I play my serenade | |
| beating my clenched fist | |
| on a gong and a drum. | |
| What I want is to give you | 90 |
| the sound of what a man is. | |
| |
| I love my eyes and lips | |
| better than yours; | |
| besides, the dampness of the night | |
| pierces my shoes. | 95 |
| |
| I can be as capricious | |
| as you can be, don’t worry! | |
| |
| Come on, open that window | |
| or I’ll go home. | |
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