Whether eagles or wrens, scattered in sparks
or perched like candelabra, each species sketches on the firmament’s velvet its
unique flight.
It looks as if each single one has been lit up to see like an eye.
Stars flapping a wing, planets planing along, they hover over an angled perch without ever alighting.
No sooner has one star or planet vanished than in the manner of a round the next jewelled rhyme arrives.
It’s almost mechanical, as if there were a birdseller about flicking switches.
Already the prettiest golden pheasant has gone, gone like a shepherd to guard her dream flock.
Here and there a few paltry chickens are pecking away among the moon’s debris of fallen pearls, pearls in such quantities that it eventually forms a white path.
Never any jerkiness, each rhythm always in place.
A bit of a flicker, like a crazed match, and phosphorescence in the guise of a swallow hurtles through the infinite only to encounter a virgin’s rising vow.
You can’t miss the manger star.
It’s of course within you.
But here back on the velvet is beauty all involved with putting on her dawn blouse.
Suddenly the neighbourhood rooster lets forth with a great crow of a rusted key in a lock.
Venus has just slipped behind a rose bush when from one end of this wretched world to the other the roosters are all flinging open the shutters. Now at last the Aviary opens up, a vast utterly blank eyelid.
No more velvet or jewels, no more swallows or vows, no more rare birds or chickens, no perch, no white path or rose bush, no blouse or beauty, nothing at all—nothing but the great Peacock of Life in all his sapphire glory making a wheel out of our eyes.
It looks as if each single one has been lit up to see like an eye.
Stars flapping a wing, planets planing along, they hover over an angled perch without ever alighting.
No sooner has one star or planet vanished than in the manner of a round the next jewelled rhyme arrives.
It’s almost mechanical, as if there were a birdseller about flicking switches.
Already the prettiest golden pheasant has gone, gone like a shepherd to guard her dream flock.
Here and there a few paltry chickens are pecking away among the moon’s debris of fallen pearls, pearls in such quantities that it eventually forms a white path.
Never any jerkiness, each rhythm always in place.
A bit of a flicker, like a crazed match, and phosphorescence in the guise of a swallow hurtles through the infinite only to encounter a virgin’s rising vow.
You can’t miss the manger star.
It’s of course within you.
But here back on the velvet is beauty all involved with putting on her dawn blouse.
Suddenly the neighbourhood rooster lets forth with a great crow of a rusted key in a lock.
Venus has just slipped behind a rose bush when from one end of this wretched world to the other the roosters are all flinging open the shutters. Now at last the Aviary opens up, a vast utterly blank eyelid.
No more velvet or jewels, no more swallows or vows, no more rare birds or chickens, no perch, no white path or rose bush, no blouse or beauty, nothing at all—nothing but the great Peacock of Life in all his sapphire glory making a wheel out of our eyes.
Tr. Robin Magowan. From the first decade of last century. A strange poem by a strange man - its lush Symbolism constantly jerks the reader through unexpected doorways. André Breton admired Saint-Pol-Roux.
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