Tease

My bags have no more weight the stickers are gleams running

above a pond

That’ll be quite enough for this country where well after

having been scrapped runs the night coach

All in black crystal along millstones turning curds

Castle which trembles and I swear has just placed a lightning

bolt in front of me

Place frustrated of everything that might render it habitable

I see nothing but narrow tangled passages

Spiral staircases

Only to the top of the watchtower

Split the rose-cut air

Banished superstitiously the primitive square from an armful

of bulrushes to spread out

The architect gone mad with what remains of free space

Seems to have dreamed a garage for a thousand round tables

To each of them is presumed supper of caviar of champagne

With me some wax busts more beautiful each than the other

but amongst them unrecognizable has slipped a live bust

Busts for there is only one tablecloth with a changeable

surface for all the tables

Lacunary enough to imprison the waist of all these women

false and true

All that is or misses being under the tablecloth shies away in

music

Awaited oracle of the incense-boat of a shoe

More gleaming than a fish thrown on the grass

Or than the calf of a leg that makes a bouquet of miner’s

lamps

Or the knee that lobs a shuttlecock into my heart

Or a mouth that tilts that tilts to pour out its perfume

Or a hand at first to the side at the very moment when it

seemed not to avoid a winged kinship with my hand

O menisci

Beyond all these present permitted and forbidden

To elephants’ backs those pillars that thin to silken threads

in the grottos

Menisci adorable curtain of tangency where life is no more

than an egret drinking

And tell me just as easily I’ll see you no more

André Breton