The Holiday Threw Me Off

[rejectomorph]

Belated Sunday Verse

Turning Road

by Pierre Reverdy

It is frightening grey dusty weather
A south wind on strong wings
Dull echoes of water in the capsizing evening
And in the soaking night spouting turning
  rough voices complaining
A taste of ashes on the tongue 
The sound of an organ in the byways
The pitching ship of the heart
All the disasters of work

When the fires of the desert go out one by one
When the eyes drip like blades of grass
When the dew falls barefoot on the leaves
Morning hardly risen
Somebody seeks
A lost address on a lost road
The stars brighten the flowers tumble down
Across the broken branches
The dark brook wipes its soft scarce parted lips
When the steps of the walker on the counting dial
order the movement and crowd the horizon
All cries pass and all times meet
And me I walk to heaven my eyes in the rays
Noise about nothing and names in my head
Living faces
           Everything that has happened in the world
And this holiday
        Where I have lost my time

-translated by Kenneth Rexroth