For Peace
With time passing, with water flowing, with
the workers leaving the factories,
with the rumours of the stock market,
with the memories, the desires, the wasted moments,
the doors opening and shutting without knowing why
with all that we wanted to say that remained on the edge
of our lips,
with a landscape already seen in a dream,
with the habit of reading newspapers,
we went for that romantic stroll we had promised ourselves
a long time ago.
We took beaten tracks, so beaten that they screamed like beaten dogs,
we wanted to leave them but a sound philosophy would always prevent us from doing so.
We argued with ourselves, we grabbed each other's throats; and tore each other apart
after ferocious insults,
We did not entirely succeed in forgiving ourselves but the heart was in it,
the always obliging heart,
the very bar that grants credit,
until the time when all the paths that you’ve always followed
fall back on you and crush you like four-leaf clovers
pressed between the pages of a book.
Suddenly it is not the same any more,
not exactly the same.
You’ve left you’ve disappeared you are in the air you breathe and you see everything.
You see a woman and you grab her by the waist. She says yes.
She does not really know what she means by this.
But you hear the rustling of wings.
The dairyman’s hello is brighter.
The large drapes of one’s memory solemnly fall down
behind a procession of runaway actors.
But the branches of the pepper trees are stirred
in sweltering countries, where are buried under the sands,
temples dedicated to bloody cults.
Out of one’s nerves a rug is made on which to lie down
and one fears
that all pain might have vanished.
You stop writing to your friends
and you are forgiving about their letters gathered in the dew.
And all that remains slowly warms up.
The horizon becomes blurred
and you congratulate yourself that the good weather will last.
You call on the muses. They pretend not to
understand;
they are camping,
catching centaurs running.
But all that happens is good.
You are as pleased as when you’ve passed the age
of the New Year’s visits.
You slip into the Adriatic Sea near a charming woman
whose eyes are islands peopled with castaways
sensing their hour of deliverance.
She is swimming.
Now is not the time to understand.
(English Translation, © Leonora; all rights reserved.)
"Pour la Paix" was published in Transition, No. 27, 1938: View this photo
Background: Transition: A Quarterly Review