The vertebral sphinx

The beautiful shade patient and curved goes about the

cobblestones

The Venetian windows open and close upon the square

Where animals go at liberty followed by lights

The wet streetlights hum framed by a cloud of blue eyes

That cover the landscape up the hill from the city

This morning a sunlight prow as you’re engulfed by the

superb songs exhaled in the old style behind the

curtains by naked female lookouts

While giant arums turn about their waists

And the bloody manikin jumps on its three feet in the

attic

He’s coming they say stiffening their necks on which

the bounding of plaits sets free glaciers just pink

Which crack under the weight of a ray of light falling

from shutters torn open

He’s coming the wolf with teeth of glass

Who eats the time in little round cans

Who blows the too-penetrating perfumes of grasses

Who smokes the little passage lights at evening in the

turnips

The columns of great apartments of marble and vetiver

shout

They shout they’re caught in those come-and-go

movements that only would animate hitherto

certain colossal factory rooms

Women motionless on turntables are going to see

It’s daytime to the left but night completely night to the

right

There are lopped branches still full of birds that pass at

top speed obscuring the hole in the casement

window

White birds laying black eggs

Where are those birds replaced now by stars edged with

two rows of pearls

A fish head very very long it’s not him any more

From the fish head are born young ladies shaking a

sieve

And from the sieve hearts made of Prince Rupert’s

drops

He’s coming it’s the wolf with teeth of glass

Who flew very high over the wasteland above the

houses

With whetted plants all turned toward his eyes

Of one sprightly to defy a bottle of foam turned upside

down on the snow

His jade claws in which he looks at himself while flying

His coat the color of sparks

He’s the one who growls in the forges at twilight-time

and in the abandoned linen mills

He’s visible they touch him he advances with his

balancing pole on the wire held by the swallows

The lookouts lean and lean at the windows

From all their side of shade from all their side of light

The spool of day is drawn in little pulls from the

direction of the paradise of sand

The pedals of night move without let

André Breton