Paul Éluard, translated by Ross Belot and Sara Burant
"In an Instant"
Paul Éluard, translated by Ross Belot and Sara Burant

In an Instant

She isn’t there.

The aproned woman watches rain at the windows
The clouds outdo each other putting on a show
A neglected
Little girl of little weight
Plays on a worn-out sofa
The silence is remorseful.

I followed the walls of a very long street
The stones the cobbles the greenery
The earth the snow the sand
The water the shadows the sun
Apparent life

Without forgetting she was there
Walking in a large garden
Pecking a white mulberry
The snow of her laughter purified the mud
Her approach was virginal.

"For a Moment of Clearheadness"
Paul Éluard, translated by Ross Belot and Sara Burant

For a Moment of Clearheadedness

  to René Char

The vultures
Drinking
Serene blood
Delicious blood
The badly dressed in dresses of flames
Ravage of charms
Of smiles like toilet brushes
Like shields of lightheadedness
Shields of the storm
Everything is allowed
At the meeting of coronas
At the promenade without hope
Innumerable vortices
On uncovered breasts.

Inhuman deaths
Forgotten
Invisible dead
Blind undying beloved
United with what she must see
A cloud unveiling
The night that took place without her.

Drinking
The day from the depth of a lock.




Deserted house

           terrible

Houses

           poor

Houses
Like empty books.

Paul Éluard (along with André Breton, Phillipe Soupault, and Louis Aragon) developed the ideas and practices which informed the early Surrealist movement in France. Éluard authored more than thirty collections of poetry, including Capitale de la douleur and La rose publique. With André Breton, Éluard co-authored the seminal Surrealist work L’immaculée Conception. He produced other collaborative collections in which his poetry is placed alongside the work of visual artists such as Max Ernst, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso. In addition, Éluard wrote essays and produced anthologies and translations. He was a member of a community of makers from whom he drew inspiration and with whose work he was emotionally, intellectually and artistically engaged.

 
 
 

Residing in Hamilton, Ontario, poet Ross Belot has been a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize and a recipient of a Canada Council for the Arts grant. His most recent collection is Moving To Climate Change Hours. Ross and Sara are co-editors of The Transformation Review: Writing on Poetry in Translation.

 

Sara Burant lives in Eugene, Oregon. Her work has been recognized with fellowships from Oregon’s Literary Arts and Playa. She’s the author of a chapbook, Verge. Ross and Sara met and were introduced to Paul Éluard’s work while pursuing late-in-life MFAs in Poetry at St. Mary’s College of California.

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