With a single caress
I make you shine in all your brilliance.
translated by Stuart Kendall
20th Century French poetry
from Love, Poetry: Firstly: XI by Paul Eluard
She doesn’t know how to set traps
she has her eyes on her beauty
so simple so simple to seduce
and her eyes enchain
and she plies them on me
and she throws the flying net of caresses
over herself.
translated by Stuart Kendall
from Love, Poetry: Firstly: II by Paul Eluard
Her eyes are towers of light
under the face of her nudity.
On the transparent surface
returning thoughts
cancel deaf words.
She effaces every image
She bewilders love and its stubborn shadows
She loves—she loves to forget herself.
translated by Stuart Kendall
from Firstly: poem xxvı by Paul Eluard
I closed my eyes so as not to see
I closed my eyes to cry
from no longer seeing you.
Where are your hands and the hands of caresses
where are your eyes the four whims of the day
with everything to lose you are no longer there
to dazzle the memory of the nights.
With everything to lose I see myself live.
translated by Stuart Kendall
poem XX by Paul Eluard
Dawn I love you I have the whole night in my veins
all night I watched you
I have everything to divine
I am sure of the darkness
giving me the power
to envelop you
to excite your desire for life
in the heart of my immobility
the power to reveal you
to liberate you to lose you
flame invisible by day.
If you go the door opens on the day
If you go the door opens on me.
translated by Stuart Kendall
from another poem of Paul Eluard
love chooses love without changing its face
translated by Stuart Kendall
poem IV by Paul Eluard
I told you for the clouds
I told you for the sea tree
for each wave for the birds in the leaves
for pebbles of noise
for the familiar hands
for the eye that becomes a face or a landscape
and the sleep that renders the sky from its color
for the entire drunken night
for the grid of the roads
for the open window for an uncovered face
I told you for your thoughts for your words
every caress every confidence endures.
translated by Stuart Kendall
from poem VII by Paul Eluard
Silence has in its breast
all the heart’s extinguished flames.
Among the starbursts of memory
the plains extend storms
and kisses multiply.
In the grand reflectors of dreams.
translated by Stuart Kendall
from a poem by Paul Eluard
I looked for you beyond waiting
beyond myself
and I love you so much that I no longer know
which of us is absent.
translated by Stuart Kendall
from The Candle by Francis Ponge
The candle, meanwhile, by the way its rays flicker on the book as it suddenly discharges its original gases urges the reader on–then bends over onto its plate and drowns in what has always fed it.
translated by Robert Bly
Leonard Durso 