No, love’s not dead in this heart nor in these eyes nor in this mouth
which was announcing its ongoing funeral.
Listen, I’ve had enough of the picturesque, of colours and charm.
l love love, its tenderness and its cruelty.
My love has but one name, one shape.
Everything passes. Mouths press to this mouth.
My love has but one name, one shape.
And if some day you remember it
O you, my love’s shape and name,
One day on the high seas between America and Europe,
When the sun’s last flourish scintillates upon the undulating
surface of the waves, or maybe one stormy night
beneath a tree in the countryside, or in a fast car,
One spring morning on boulevard Malesherbes,
One rainy day,
At dawn before you go to bed,
Tell yourself that you shouldn’t regret things: Ronsard before me
and Baudelaire sang of the regret of old women and dead women
who despised love’s purest form.
You when you’re dead
You’ll still be a beauty and desirable.
I’ll already be dead, entirely enclosed within your immortal body,
within your stunning image ever present amongst
the perpetual wonders of life and eternity, but if I live
Your voice and its accent, the beam of your eyes
Your scent and the scent of your hair and many other things
will live on inside me,
In me who am neither Ronsard nor Baudelaire,
I who am Robert Desnos and whom, having known and loved you,
Are just as worthy as them.
I who am Robert Desnos, for loving you
And who wants to attach no other reputation
to my memory on the contemptible earth

Robert Desnos

From À la mystérieuse, (1926)

Translation by John Lyons