Paul Eluard

The Nakedness of Truth (I know it well)
Despair has no wings,
Nor has love,
No countenance:
They do not speak.
I do not stir,
I do not behold them,
I do not speak to them,
But I am as real as my love and my despair.

I Cannot be Known
I cannot be known
Better than you know me
Your eyes in which we sleep
We together
Have made for my man's gleam
A better fate than for the common nights
Your eyes in which I travel
Have given to signs along the roads
A meaning alien to the earth
In your eyes who reveal to us
Our endless solitude
Are no longer what they thought themselves to be
You cannot be known
Better than I know you.

La terre est bleue
La terre est bleue comme une orange
Jamais une erreur les mots ne mentent pas
Ils ne vous donnent plus à chanter
Au tour des baisers de s'entendre
Les fous et les amours
Elle sa bouche d'alliance
Tous les secrets tous les sourires
Et quels vêtements d'indulgence
À la croire toute nue.
Les guêpes fleurissent vert
L'aube se passe autour du cou
Un collier de fenêtres
Des ailes couvrent les feuilles
Tu as toutes les joies solaires
Tout le soleil sur la terre
Sur les chemins de ta beauté.

Curfew
What else could we do, for the doors were guarded,
What else could we do, for they had imprisoned us,
What else could we do, for the streets were forbidden us,
What else could we do, for the town was asleep?
What else could we do, for she hungered and thirsted,
What else could we do, for we were defenceless,
What else could we do, for night had descended,
What else could we do, for we were in love?

Other Children
"Little child of my five senses
and of my tenderness."
Let us cradle our loves,
We will have good children.
Well cared for,
We will fear nothing on earth,
Happiness, good fortune, prudence,
Our loves
And this leap from age to age,
From the order of a child to that of an old man,
Will not diminish us.
(Confidence).

At the Window
I have not always had this certainty, this pessimism which reassures the best among
us. There was
a time when my friends laughed at me. I was not the master of my words. A certain
indifference, I
have not always known well what I wanted to say, but most often it was because I had
nothing to
say. The necessity of speaking and the desire not to be heard. My life hanging only by
a thread.
There was a time when I seemed to understand nothing. My chains floated on the
water.
All my desires are born of my dreams. And I have proven my love with words. To what
fantastic
creatures have I entrusted myself, in what dolorous and ravishing world has my
imagination
enclosed me? I am sure of having been loved in the most mysterious of domains, my
own. The
language of my love does not belong to human language, my human body does not
touch the flesh
of my love. My amorous imagination has always been constant and high enough so
that nothing
could attempt to convince me of error.

The Deaf and Blind
Do we reach the sea with clocks
In our pockets, with the noise of the sea
In the sea, or are we the carriers
Of a purer and more silent water?
The water rubbing against our hands sharpens knives.
The warriors have found their weapons in the waves
And the sound of their blows is like
The rocks that smash the boats at night.
It is the storm and the thunder. Why not the silence
Of the flood, for we have dreamt within us
Space for the greatest silence and we breathe
Like the wind over terrible seas, like the wind
That creeps slowly over every horizon.

Head Against The Walls
There were only a few of them
In all the earth
Each one thought he was alone
They sang, they were right
To sing
But they sang the way you sack a city
The way you kill yourself.
Frayed moist night
Shall we endure you
Longer
Shall we not shake
Your cloacal evidence
We shall not wait for a morning
Made to measure
We wanted to see in other people's eyes
Their nights of love exhausted
They dream only of dying
Their lovely flesh forgotten
Bees caught in their honey
They are ignorant of life
And we suffer everywhere
Red roofs dissolve under the tongue
Dog days in the full beds
Come, empty your sacks of fresh blood
There is still a shadow here
A shred of imbecile there
In the wind their masks, their cast-offs
In lead their traps, their chains
And their prudent blind-men's gestures
There is fire under rocks
If you put out the fire
Be careful we have
Despite the night it breeds
More strength than the belly
Of your wives and sisters
And we will reproduce
Without them but by ax strokes
In your prisons
Torrents of stone labors of foam
Where eyes float without rancor
Just eyes without hope
That know you
And that you should have put out
Rather than ignore
With a safety pin quicker than your gibbets
We shall take our booty where we want it to be