We shall soon have depleted our hoard of Buried Treasure. But on Day 668 of the daily poems our translator-poet Timothy Adès finds us a gem set in the living cloud, a diamond of rage and solaces, from a long poem by French surrealist poet Robert Desnos.
Siren-Anemone
Robert Desnos translated from French by Timothy Adès
(the Anemone is Yvonne, who never loved him. The Siren is Youki, his future wife)
Under the keels bloomed the anemone
Keels ripped on reefs in forest greeneries
In tarnished mirrors floors of ebony
And in our hearts that throb and never cease
She is the gem set in the living cloud
Pride of the ordered stars and galaxies
The eye revealing to the ragged crowd
The diamond of rage and solaces
Glad to swim far from cliff-tops thrusting tall
Among fraternal shoals of sharks she’ll rove
Hard-breasted siren knows the tales they tell
Where shady tunnels lead to treasure-trove
Not shining gold in trenches of the sea
Not clues to quayside lore would she unearth
She’d rather flare her nostrils joyfully
At the salt winds more fraught with scent of death
Robert Desnos translated from French by Timothy Adès
Published in Robert Desnos, Surrealist, Lover, Resistant: Arc Publications 2016