Flushed woman in love
to take part in your pleasure
I color myself with pain.
I lived
you close your eyes
you enclose yourself in me
to accept life.
Everything that repeats itself is incomprehensible
you are born in a mirror
before my ancient image.
translated by Stuart Kendall
Paul Eluard
from Firstly: poem vııı by Paul Eluard
My love for having given form to my desires
brought your lips to the sky of your words as a star
your kisses in the living night
and the wake of your arms around me
like a flame in the sign of conquest
my dreams are clear and perpetual
in this world.
And when you aren’t here
I dream that I sleep
I dream that I dream.
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
An old favorite of mine: The Beloved by Paul Eluard
She is standing on my eyelids
And her hair is inside mine,
She is the shape of my hand,
She is the color of my eyes,
She is surrounded by my shadows
Like a rock by the sky.
Her eyes always opened
She never lets me sleep
Her dreams in broad daylight
Make sunlight evaporate,
Make me laugh, cry and laugh,
Speak without a thing to say.
translated by Michael Benedikt
from Love, Poetry by Paul Eluard
She leans over me
the unknowing heart
to see if I love her
she is sure she forgets
under the clouds of her eyelids
her head falls asleep in my hands
where are we
together inseparable
living living
man and woman
my head rides in her dreams.
translated by Stuart Kendall
Leonard Durso 