Paul Eluard

14 December 1895 – 18 November 1952 / Saint Denis / Paris

Thus, Woman, Principle Of Life, Speaker Of The Ideal

Would you see
The dark form of the sun
The contours of life
Or be truly dazzled
By the fire that fuses all
The flame conveyer of modesties
In flesh in gold that fine gesture

Error is as unknown
As the limits of spring
The temptation prodigious
All touches all travels you
At first it was only a thunder of incense
Which you love the more
The fine praise at four
Lovely motionless nude
Violin mute but palpable
I speak to you of seeing

I will speak to you of your eyes
Be faceless if you wish
Of their unwilling colour
Of luminous stones
Colourless
Before the man you conquer
His blind enthusiasm
Reigns naively like a spring
In the desert

Between the sands of night and the waves of day
Between earth and water
No ripple to erase
No road possible

Between your eyes and the images I see there
Is all of which I think
Myself inderacinable
Like a plant which masses itself
Which simulates rock among other rocks
That I carry for certain
You all entire
All that you gaze at
All

This is a boat
That sails a sweet river
It carries playful women
And patient grain
This is a horse descending the hill
Or perhaps a flame rising
A great barefooted laugh in a wretched heart
An autumn height of soothing verdure
A bird that persists in folding its wings in its nest
A morning that scatters the reddened light
To waken the fields
This is a parasol
And this the dress
Of a lace-maker more seductive than a bouquet
Of the bell-sounds of the rainbow

This thwarts immensity
This has never enough space
Welcome is always elsewhere
With the lightning and the flood
That accompany it
Of medusas and fires
Marvellously obliging
They destroy the scaffolding
Topped by a sad coloured flag
A bounded star
Whose fingers are paralysed

I speak of seeing you
I know you living
All exists all is visible
There is no fleck of night in your eyes

I see by a light exclusively yours.
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