To be caught in the trap

          It's a restaurant like the rest. Must it be thought I resemble no-one? A tall woman, beside me, beats some eggs with her fingers. A traveler lays his clothing on a table and stands up to me. He's wrong, I don't know any mystery, I don't even know the signification of the word: mystery, I've never looked for anything, discovered anything, he's wrong to insist.
          The storm that, at times, emerges from the fog turns its eyes and shoulders on me. Space then has doors and windows. The traveler declares to me that I am no longer the same. No longer the same! I gather up the debris of all my marvels. It was the tall woman who told me it is debris of marvels, this debris. I fling it in brooks steady and full of birds. The sea, the calm sea is amongst them like the sky in light. Colors also, if one speaks to me of colors, I no longer look at. Speak to me of forms, I have great need of inquietude.
          Tall woman, speak to me of forms, or indeed I go to sleep and lead the great life, hands caught in head and head in mouth, in the mouth indeed closed, interior language.

 

 Paul Eluard