Tour Of The Tomb

By loving so much, I lost myself in the sea.  And what a sea!

A storm of laughter and tears.

If you climb aboard a ship be careful to look at the figurehead that

will gaze at you with an eye beaten away by the wave and salt water.

          But what am I saying?  The spectacles of love don’t interest me

very much.  All I want to be now is a sail blown by the pleasure of the 

monsoons toward unknown continents where I will find only one

person.  The one you already have a perfect name for.

          I undress, as an explorer lost on an island should and I stay

immobile as a figurehead.

          Hail to you, wind from afar and you, desert, and you,

forgetfulness.

          I’ll be forgotten.  Someday no one will know my name but I will

know hers.  One evening, naked in glory and rich, I will come back, I

will knock on her door, completely nude, but no one will answer, even

when, having opened the door, I’ll appear in her sight.

          I have grasped, at least, the meaning of perpetuity.  Not the

ridiculous one of cemetery plots.

          I wish in vain for imaginary guillotines, but can only offer the

blood-thirsty crowds my desire for suicide.

          Revolution!  You’ll only shine after my death on the immense

white marble block that will cover my immense corpse.

          France is a wasps’ nest, Europe a rotted field and the world a

peninsula of my awareness.

          But fortunately I still have the stars left, and the awareness of

my moral nobility opposed to the thousand obstacles the world sets

against my love.

Translated by Carolyn Forché

Letter To Youki

My love,

Our suffering would be unbearable if I couldn’t regard it as a passing and sentimental illness.  Our reunion will make our life beautiful for at least thirty years.  For my part, I’m taking a deep swig of youth, and I will return filled with love and strength. During work a birthday, my birthday was the occasion for a long meditation on you.  Will this letter reach you in time for your birthday?  I would have liked to give you a hundred thousand American cigarettes, a dozen couture dresses, an apartment on the rue de Seine, an automobile, a little house in the Compiègne forest, the one on Belle Isle and a little four-penny bouquet.  In my absence, you can go ahead and buy the flowers.  I will repay you for them.  The rest I promise you for later.

But before all else, drink a bottle of good wine and think of me.  I hope our friends won’t leave you alone on this day.  I thank them for their devotion and their courage.  I received a package from Jean-Louis Barrault about a week ago.  Kiss him on the cheek for me as well as Madeleine Renaud, as the package is a proof that my letter did arrive.  I have not received a reply, but I’m waiting for one every day.  Kiss the whole family for me, Lucienne, Tante Juliette, Georges.  If you meet Passuer’s brother, give him my regards and ask him if he knows anyone who can come and help you.  What’s new with my books at the press?  I have many ideas for poems and novels.  I’m sorry that I have neither the freedom nor the time to write them.  You can, however, tell Gallimard that within three months of my return they will receive the manuscript for a love story in an entirely new genre.  I am closing for today.

Today, the 15th of July, I receive four letters, from Barrault, Julia, Dr. Benet, and Daniel.  Thank them and excuse me for not having replied.  I have the right to only one letter a month.  Still nothing from your hand, but they do give me news of you; this will be for next time.  I hope that this letter is as our life to come.  My love, I kiss you as tenderly as honorability permits in a letter which must be passed by the censor.  A thousand kisses.  And have you received the little hope chest that I sent to the hotel in Compiègne?

Robert

Translated by Carolyn Forché