5
The timeless sleepers tangled in the bed
In the midst of the sonorous island, alone
The tongue between the teeth
The river between the sands
Love in my hand like lace
Your hand enlaced with mine.
6
A delicate breath a wisp of smoke
Floating between our eyes
The rainbow-coloured barque of pleasure
Brushing the fluid foliage aside
Derision’s flimsy feathers
Between our eyes
The shadow of a smile.
7
The full breasts of eternity awaiting tender hands.
8
Not wholly unprepared
Nor entirely unafraid
Vigilant
Watching the colours
Discovered by morning:
Dispensation of doubtful benefits.
9
At least alone at last
When gone the body’s warmth
The incisiveness of glances
The unwinding crimson thread
The given flower
Forgotten mouths forget.
10
For now we are suspended above life
There are a great many questions to be answered
A great many debts to be paid
So evanescent that which binds us
That more is meant, regret is absent …
Our burning possession of each other
Held in both hands because it is all we have.
c. 1936
LOZANNE
It was seven, it was nine o’clock, the doors were closing, the windows were screaming. You bent over the shadow that lay on the floor and saw its eyes dissolving. The band about your forehead began to turn. The band of fever.
The armchair turned into a palace, the carpet became a bank of withered flowers, and then it was time to go. Every semblance of that which had gone before became the means by which you ascended the great staircase. And took your place among the stars.
For it is significant, is it not, that the blemish about which you were so insistent was nothing less than that interminable voice which haunted you in your dreams, saying ‘I love you’ over and over again. And the panelling of the room where they asked you questions was made of exactly the same wood as the mallet which you had to hate.
The dusty and ashen residue of a passion that now raged elsewhere, but still raged, rose slowly upwards to the surface of the lake as your blood sank slowly through it. And the other returned to ice. Oh, I can see through your eyes now and I can see what flame it was that melted everything before it! (Though the obstinate sod refused to become softened by the rain of thaw.) But you were spared passing through that black box where a masked man kisses his victim before her death. I ask the glass again: Who gave the victims right to refuse life to those who refuse to be victimized?
Those who damned shall be damned.
c. 1936
SALVADOR DALÍ
The face of the precipice is black with lovers;
The sun above them is a bag of nails; the spring’s
First rivers hide among their hair.
Goliath plunges his hand into the poisoned well
And bows his head and feels my feet walk through his brain.
The children chasing butterflies turn round and see him there
With his hand in the well and my body growing from his head,
And are afraid. They drop their nets and walk into the wall like smoke.
The smooth plain with its mirrors listens to the cliff
Like a basilisk eating flowers.
And the children, lost in the shadows of the catacombs,
Call to the mirrors for help:
‘Strong-bow of salt, cutlass of memory,
Write on my map the name of every river.’
A flock of banners fight their way through the telescoped forest
And fly away like birds towards the sound of roasting meat.
Sand falls into the boiling rivers through the telescopes’ mouths
And forms clear drops of acid with petals of whirling flame.
Heraldic animals wade through the asphyxia of planets,
Butterflies burst from their skins and grow long tongues like plants,
The plants play games with a suit of mail like a cloud.
Mirrors write Goliath’s name upon my forehead,
While the children are killed in the smoke of the catacombs
And lovers float down from the cliffs like rain.
p. 1934
THE DIABOLICAL PRINCIPLE
The red dew of autumn clings to winter’s curtains
And when the curtain rises the landscape is as empty as a board
Empty except for a broken bottle and a torso broken like a bottle
And when the curtain falls the palace of cards will fall
The card-castle on the table will topple without a sound
An eye winks from the shadow of the gallows
A tumbled bed slides upwards from the shadow
A suicide with mittened hands stumbles out of the lake
And writes a poem on the tablets of a dead man’s heart
The last man but one climbs the scaffold and fades into the mist
The marine sceptre is splintered like an anvil
Its spine crackles with electric nerves
While eagle pinions thunder through the darkness
While swords and breastplates clatter in the darkness
And the storm falls across the bed like a thrice-doomed tree.
A basket of poisoned arrows
Severing seawrack, ships’ tracks
Leadentipped darts of disaster
A unicorn champs at the waves
The waves are green branches singing
The cry of a foal at daybreak
A broken mouth at sunset
A broken lamp among the clouds’ draperies
A sound drops into the water and the water boils
The sound of disastrous waves
Waves flood the room when the door opens
A white horse stamps upon the liquid floor
The sunlight is tiring to our opened eyes
And the sand is dead
Feet in the sand make patterns
Patterns flow like rivers in the distant sky
Rippling shells like careful signatures
A tangled skein of blood
In fumigated emptiness revolves the mind
The light laughs like an unposted letter
Railways rush into the hills.
A worm slithers from the earth and the shell is broken
A giant mazed misery tears the veil to shreds
Stop it tormentor stop the angry planet before it breaks the sky
Having shattered the untapped barrel
Having given up hope for water
Having shaken the chosen words in a hat
History opened its head like a wallet
And folded itself inside.
c. 1936
THE RITES OF HYSTERIA
In the midst of the flickering sonorous islands
The islands with liquid gullets full of mistletoe-suffering
Where untold truths are hidden in fibrous baskets
And the cold mist of decayed psychologies stifles the sun
An arrow hastening through the zone of basaltic honey
An arrow choked by suppressed fidgetings and smokey spasms
An arrow with lips of cheese was caught by a floating hair
The perfumed lenses whose tongues were tied up with wire
The boxes of tears and the bicycles coated with stains
Swam out of their false-bottomed nests into clouds of dismay
Where the gleams and the moth-bitten monsters the puddles of soot
And a half-strangled gibbet all cut off an archangel’s wings
The flatfooted heart of a memory ope
ned its solitary eye
Till the freak in the showcase was smothered in mucus and sweat
A cluster of insane massacres turns green upon the highroad
Green as the nadir of a mystery in the closet of a dream
And a wild growth of lascivious pamphlets became a beehive
The afternoon scrambles like an asylum out of its hovel
The afternoon swallows a bucketful of chemical sorrows
And the owners of rubber pitchforks bake all their illusions
In an oven of dirty globes and weedgrown stupors
Now the beckoning nudity of diseases putrifies the saloon
The severed limbs of the galaxy wriggle like chambermaids
The sewing-machine on the pillar condenses the windmill’s halo
Which poisoned the last infanta by placing a tooth in her ear
When the creeping groans of the cellar’s anemone vanished
The nightmare spun on the roof a chain-armour of handcuffs
And the ashtray balanced a ribbon upon a syringe
An opaque whisper flies across the forest
Shaking its trailing sleeves like a steaming spook
Till the icicle stabs at the breast with the bleeding nipple
And bristling pot-hooks slit open the garden’s fan
In the midst of the flickering sonorous hemlocks
A screen of hysteria blots out the folded hemlocks
And feathery eyelids conceal the volcano’s mouth.
c. 1936
AND THE SEVENTH DREAM IS THE DREAM OF ISIS
1
white curtains of infinite fatigue
dominating the starborn heritage of the colonies of St Francis
white curtains of tortured destinies
inheriting the calamities of the plagues of the desert
encourage the waistlines of women to expand
and the eyes of men to enlarge like pocket-cameras
teach children to sin at the age of five
to cut out the eyes of their sisters with nail-scissors
to run into the streets and offer themselves to unfrocked priests
teach insects to invade the deathbeds of rich spinsters
and to engrave the foreheads of their footmen with purple signs
for the year is open the year is complete
the year is full of unforeseen happenings
and the time of earthquakes is at hand
today is the day when the streets are full of hearses
and when women cover their ring fingers with pieces of silk
when the doors fall off their hinges in ruined cathedrals
when hosts of white birds fly across the ocean from america
and make their nests in the trees of public gardens
the pavements of cities are covered with needles
the reservoirs are full of human hair
fumes of sulphur envelop the houses of ill-fame
out of which bloodred lilies appear.
across the square where crowds are dying in thousands
a man is walking a tightrope covered with moths
2
there is an explosion of geraniums in the ballroom of the hotel
there is an extremely unpleasant odour of decaying meat
arising from the depetalled flower growing out of her ear
her arms are like pieces of sandpaper
or wings of leprous birds in taxis
and when she sings her hair stands on end
and lights itself with a million little lamps like glow-worms
you must always write the last two letters of her christian name
upside down with a blue pencil
she was standing at the window clothed only in a ribbon
she was burning the eyes of snails in a candle
she was eating the excrement of dogs and horses
she was writing a letter to the president of france
3
the edges of leaves must be examined through microscopes
in order to see the stains made by dying flies
at the other end of the tube is a woman bathing her husband
and a box of newspapers covered with handwriting
when an angel writes the word TOBACCO across the sky
the sea becomes covered with patches of dandruff
the trunks of trees bust open to release streams of milk
little girls stick photographs of genitals to the windows of their homes
prayerbooks in churches open themselves at the death service
and virgins cover their parents’ beds with tealeaves
there is an extraordinary epidemic of tuberculosis in yorkshire
where medical dictionaries are banned from public libraries
and salt turns a pale violet colour every day at seven o’clock
when the hearts of troubadours unfold like soaked mattresses
when the leaven of the gruesome slum-visitors
and the wings of private airplanes look like shoeleather
shoeleather on which pentagrams have been drawn
shoeleather covered with vomitings of hedgehogs
shoeleather used for decorating wedding-cakes
and the gums of queens like glass marbles
queens whose wrists are chained to the walls of houses
and whose fingernails are covered with little drawings of flowers
we rejoice to receive the blessing of criminals
and we illuminate the roofs of convents when they are hung
we look through a telescope on which the lord’s prayer has been written
and we see an old woman making a scarecrow
on a mountain near a village in the middle of spain
we see an elephant killing a stag-beetle
by letting hot tears fall onto the small of its back
we see a large cocoa-tin full of shapeless lumps of wax
there is a horrible dentist walking out of a ship’s funnel
and leaving behind him footsteps which make noises
on account of his accent he was discharged from the sanatorium
and sent to examine the methods of cannibals
so that wreaths of passion-flowers were floating in the darkness
giving terrible illnesses to the possessors of pistols
so that large quantities of rats disguised as pigeons
were sold to various customers from neighbouring towns
who were adepts at painting gothic letters on screens
and at tying up parcels with pieces of grass
we told them to cut off the buttons on their trousers
but they swore in our faces and took off their shoes
whereupon the whole place was stifled with vast clouds of smoke
and the drums of the hospitals were broken like glass
and glass were the faces in the last looking-glass.
p. 1933
SURREALIST AND OTHER POEMS
(1936–1938)
A SUDDEN SQUALL
After some days of heat
Withering leaf and bloom
Like pebbles falls the hail,
Like chips of stone the sleet
Out of the sudden gloom
Across the peaceful vale
Just now so bright.
While we are waiting for
The sulky storm to stop
Hour after hour,
Watching the garden lake
Toss the toy ship,
The orchard fast falls dark
And bruised fruits drop.
Birds are all flown;
Rabbits in holes
Wait for the sun’s return;
At sea great whales
Send up their fountains
As they drive taciturn
Through waves like mountains.
Green becomes sodden grey
And across the fields
At d
eath of day
Mist draws its chilly sheets,
And darkness wields
Its eerie power, night’s
Creatures begin to cry.
This weather’s change is blind.
His hopes grow dimmer
Who thought that summer
Might have no end;
Would have good reason
To resign his mind
To a rainy season.
p. 1936
COMPETITION
The ultimate perfection of wisdom is undesirable
And more so especially since the tongue-twister started to reign
And the calloused trestles proclaimed their destinations
And over the whole of Utopia there was a thick white blanket
Which muffled the horrible sound of colliding trains
And out of the national rivers came swarms of bees
Which mumbled inaudible fragments of ancient lore
Hurrying past the surrounding palace of water
Which stood on its feet to wave them a last good-bye
When the door of the closet opened
Disclosing an endless vista of swollen gems
Turning incessantly upon their pinprick navels
Displaying their undersides to the curious eyes of the thieves
Their lambskin vests to the fatuous undertakers
And all their embroidered fins to the end of the world
So the captain said this has nothing to do with the earthquake
This is awfully brave of the woman I’ll give her a bone
And turned in his bed which was folded in half down the middle
And covered with pieces of eight
And announced to the night that a prize would be given for beauty
And another for wearing a wig.
p. 1936
‘THE ENTRANCE TO THAT VALLEY STANDS ALONE’
The entrance to that valley stands alone
Bulked boulders strewn where no wind penetrates
And all is quiet as a falling leaf; you would believe,
Almost, that you had died, and this was after-sleep; -
And down the ashy hills on either side
The lava-beds are dead which show where once there flowed
The love which being loveless had to overflow
Into the stillness, and to be turned to stone
As formless as an unloved woman’s sigh.
If a voice speaks, it is your voice which speaks;
There are no others here. You hear
Your other self, whose accents cold, in pity