"Certitude"

CERTAINTY
If I speak to you this is for better to hear you
If I hear you I am sure to understand you

If you smile this is for better to invade me
If you smile I see the entire world

If I embrace you this is to continue me
If we live all will be at pleasure

If I leave you we will remember
While leaving you ourselves will meet again

-Paul Eluard

CERTITUDE
Si je te parle c'est pour mieux t'entendre
Si je t'entends je suis sûr de te comprendre

Si tu souris c'est pour mieux m'envahir
Si tu souris je vois le monde entier

Si je t'étreins c'est pour me continuer
Si nous vivons tout sera à plaisir

Si je te quitte nous nous souviendrons
En te quittant nous nous retrouverons

"To Live"

This poem made me think of True Blood which returns on 6/14 by the by...

but of course it's open to interpretation.

To Live

We both have our hands to give
Take mine I shall lead you afar

I have lived several times my face has changed
With every threshold I have crossed and every hand clasped Familial springtime was reborn
Keeping for itself and for me its perishable snow
Death and the betrothed
The future with five fingers clenched and letting go

My age always gave me
New reasons for living through others
For having the blood of man other's heart in mine

Oh the lucid fellow I was and that I am
Before the pallor of frail blind girls
Lovelier than the delicate worn moon so fair
By the reflection of life's ways
A trail of moss anf trees
Of mist and morning dew
Of the young body which does not rise alone
To its place on earth
Wind cold and rain cradle it
Summer makes a man of it

Presesence is my virtue in each visible hand
Only death is solitude
From delight to fury from fury to clarity
I make myself whole through all beings
Through all weather on the earth and in the clouds
Through the passing seasons I am young
And strong for having lived
I am young my blood rises over my ruins

We have our hands to entwine Nothing can ever seduce better
Tahn our bonding to each other a forest
Returning earth to sky and the sky to night

To the night which prepares an unending day.

-Paul Eluard

"I Cannot Be Known"

I Cannot be Known

I cannot be known
Better than you know me
Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man's gleam
A better fate than for the common nights

Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth

In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude
Are no longer what they thought themselves to be

You cannot be known
Better than I know you.

-Paul Eluard

"Nous avons fait la nuit..."

Nous avons fait la nuit...

Nous avons fait la nuit, je tiens ta main, je veille
Je te soutiens de toutes mes forces
Je grave sur un roc l’étoile de tes forces
Sillons profonds où la bonté de ton corps germera
Je me répète ta voix cachée, ta voix publique
Je ris encore de l’orgueilleuse
Que tu traites comme une mendiante
Des fous que tu respectes, des simples où tu te baignes
Et dans ma tête qui se met doucement d’accord avec
la tienne, avec la nuit
Je m’émerveille de l’inconnue que tu deviens
Une inconnue semblable à toi, semblable à tout ce que j’aime
Qui est toujours nouveau

-Paul Eluard

"The Absence"

The Absence
I speak to you across cities

I speak to you across plains

My mouth is upon your pillow

Both faces of the walls come meeting

My voice discovering you

I speak to you of eternity

O cities memories of cities

Cities wrapped in our desires

Cities come early cities come lately

Cities strong and cities secret

Plundered of their master's builders

All their thinkers all their ghosts

Fields pattern of emerald

Bright living surviving

The harvest of the sky over our earth

Feeds my voice I dream and weep

I laugh and dream among the flames

Among the clusters of the sun

And over my body your body spreads

The sheet of it's bright mirror.

Paul Eluard