Mute Objects of Expression (5 page)

This seems to me a Bolshevistic point of view.

. . . But (another development) the dictatorship of man over nature, the elements, will never be more than a stage in the progress towards the state of perfect harmony (which one can well imagine) between man and nature, wherein the latter will receive from man as much as he takes from it.

The poet (is a moralist who) separates the
qualities
of the object then recomposes them, as the painter separates the colors, the light, and recomposes them in his canvas.

(Marvelous pair of birds by Ébiche seen before his works went off to Poland on September 2, 1938.)

Soberly seated side by side in a basket round as a nest, crouched like brood hens mastering their fear, their multicolored feathers lightly fluffed and puffed out, in cataleptic suspension (or truly heroic?), heads immobile, eyes wide.

Slender darts or short fat javelins,

Instead of circling roof peaks,

We are sky-rats, meaty streaks of lightning, torpedoes,

Feathery pears, lice of vegetation.

Often, stationed on some high branch,

I keep watch, benumbed and huddled like a grudge.

NOTES FOR A BIRD

My name in French unites the vowels

Beginning with an egg-shaped one

In pairs of diphthongs around the serpent

Close to me in classifications.

Unfledged at first, then a branch bird, I take off

From the tapestry in three dimensions.

Like ripe fruit I drop but, discovering my wings,

I spread them wide and flee to the heavens . . .

Graceful arcs, careful zigzags,

Repeated hops though not too far,

Sweetness of mien, faint calls and roulades,

Generally assure that we are taken as little darlings.

We're not seen for what we often are:

Lousy little minions with dirty ruffs,

Filthy jabots, impenitent sphincters . . .

Out of our nests intended rather for our eggs,

Ovoid baskets that flake off clouds of down,

Our comfort resides in our feathers,

Eiderdowns and cushions hauled along on our backs,

Where we can only just burrow under,

Crest under wing, sometimes a foot,

Like a tramp resting on his bundles,

A traveler, head down on his valise

On a hard bench amidst the jostling . . .

You there, with your round basket, heroic brood hens,

Feathers standing on end, terror at its tips,

Do we even understand your physical distress? . . .

Light hamper easily pulverized,

Whose breastbone alone is flanked by flesh,

Stump-armed hunchback mounted on matchsticks,

Of waddling gait or hopping steps,

Shoulder feeble and forever dislocated,

Though I can spread it as a wing,

The sternum of a rachitic like a vessel's keel

Much needed for balance in flight

But painful in a crouched position,

Anxious head, eyes wide and sometimes cataleptic,

Long supple neck, finally a bony beak covering

Very long jaws devoid of teeth.

Not a gram of fat on any limb.

In my hull I've stashed all away,

My gizzard filled with September seeds.

Acid gnats assure my diarrhea.

By its particular weight I know my stomach,

A stomach my wings loft to the skies

Better nerve-scribed than autumn leaves,

Articulated better than sails of a junk . . .

And I have my talons, my ferocious beak

For moments when I feel disposed to rage.

Whether I grip the branch or peck the bark,

The horn of my beak or talons equals steel.

NEW NOTES FOR MY BIRD

Once unfurled, I must take to the air,

Against a backdrop of sky, of harvests, of tilled fields,

Sleep-deprived to show off my wingspan

Which can never be studied at leisure;

And I pull myself back together again upon landing –

Limbs tucked away like blades of a pocketknife –

The top feathers settling in a way

That allows no further view of the articulations.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Other animals flee as man approaches

But only to dive into the closest burrow.

As for
me,
the line I inscribe on the album of the skies,

Before it fades, holds in prolonged attention

An eye that's anxious not to lose me in the clouds' crosshatching . . .

Meanwhile, in the woods, mysterious exchanges,

Intense diplomatic activity in the treetops,

Precipitate withdrawals, fearful attempts,

Brief ambassadorial jaunts, polite approaches,

And nobles deeply penetrating the leaves...

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

We're also gliders with muscular motors,

Elastics torqued up in a special way,

And are, on our own, self-catapults.

1. The scattered undisciplined flocks.

2. Birds like wooden spigots that creak and squeak, that cheep and chirp . . .

Turning back to the first sentence of this notebook of
observations,
where I said (instinctively), “It's very likely that we understand birds better since we've been making airplanes,” this is how I wish to conclude:

If I have applied myself to the bird with all the attention, all the ardor of expression at my beck and call, and even at times giving precedence (through a reasoned modesty of reason) to intuitive expression over simple description or observation – that is so that we may manufacture perfected airplanes, have a better grip on the world.

We will make marvelous strides, man will make marvelous strides if he returns to things (just as we must return to the level of words in order to express things properly) and applies himself to studying them and expressing them, trusting simultaneously his eye, his reason, and his intuition, with no encumbrance to keep him from pursuing the
novelties
they contain – and knowing how to consider them in their essence as in their details. But at the same time he must remake them in the
logos
starting from the materials of the
logos
, which is to say speech.

Only then will his knowledge, his discoveries be
solid,
not
fugitive,
not fleeting.

Expressed in logical terms, which are the only human terms, they will then be his own, he will be able to make good on them.

He will have heightened not only his enlightenedunderstanding, but his power over the world.

He will have advanced toward joy and well-being, not only for himself, but for all.

 

THE CARNATION

 

 

Accept the challenge things offer to language. These carnations, for instance, defy language. I won't rest till I have drawn together a few words that will compel anyone reading or hearing them to say: this has to do with something like a carnation.

Is that poetry? I have no idea, and it scarcely matters. For me it is a need, a commitment, a rage, a matter of self-respect, and that's all there is to it.