As the year draws to its close, the theme of portals also comes towards its close, and on this Day 757 of the Daily Poems the portal is a window. Our translator poet Timothy Adès conjures up a vision of a Parisian beauty wearing rien du tout, caught at her window by French poet Robert Desnos (who died of typhoid, age 44 in Theresienstadt concentration camp, June 1945)
The memory
by Robert Desnos, Paris 1943
Translated by Timothy Adès
Lucky to be overdue,
Strolling down each avenue,
At your window I saw you,
Caught you wearing rien du tout;
To another I was true.
Yes, my heart already loved
Voices very far removed.
Shadows of black night had daubed
The big statue’s pale eyes, carved
At the crossroads where I roved.
In the street the breeze blew fair
From Passy or Pépinière:
I was passing, I know where,
And I chanced to find you bare,
Blot of white on soft night air.
Fallen leaf of seasons past,
Phantom and nocturnal ghost,
Pennants proud for daybreak hoist,
With what future were you faced,
In our capital hard-pressed?
Paris, pressed to live and flame,
Stolid, fired up all the same
By the nights that quickly came,
Like the night you had no shame,
Propping up your window-frame.
Robert Desnos
Translated by Timothy Adès