It was going on five in the morning The ship of steam stretched its chain to shatter the windows And outside A glowworm Lifted Paris like a leaf It was only a long trembling scream A scream from the Maternity Hospital nearby FINIS FOUNDRY FANATIC But whatever joy escaped in the exhalation of that pain It seems to me that I was falling for a long time I still had my fist clenched around a handful of grass And suddenly that rustle of flowers and needles of ice Those green eyebrows that shooting-star pendulum From what depths was the bell actually able to rise again The hermetic bell Which nothing last night made me foresee would stop on this landing The bell whose sides read Undine Moving to raise your spearheaded Sagittarius pedal You had carved the infallible signs Of my enchantment With a dagger whose coral handle forks into infinity So that your blood and mine Would become one
From Andre Breton: Selections edited by Mark Polizzoti. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission of University of California Press. "It Was Going on Five in the Morning" translated by Zack Rogow and Bill Zavatsky. All rights reserved.