Poemquotes 10

"The child dances, lightly, in a leotard too big for him; lighter than the balls on which he's balancing. And when he passes round his money-purse, no-one gives anything. No-one gives anything out of fear for filling it with too heavy a weight. He is so thin."
-Pierre Reverdy, "Saltimbanques", from Poèmes en prose [Poems in Prose], 1915, my translation

"But when he knew someone was being awaited, and who, he knew to transform his face. Thus he entered the place of him who was awaited and who did not show up."
-Pierre Reverdy, "L'envers à l'endroit" [Backwards Forwards], from Poèmes en prose [Poems in Prose], 1915, my translation

"The four legs of the table are still; the others too."
-Pierre Reverdy, "Les pensées basses" [Base Thoughts], from Poèmes en prose [Poems in Prose], 1915, my translation

"But what hurt, what hurt! We each had an ice-cube between our fingers and upon our tongue."
-Pierre Reverdy, "Sur l'amour-propre" [On Pride], from La lucarne ovale [The Oval Skylight], 1916, my translation

"So I opened the doors one by one. In the first room, where some children slept, I found pointless crime."
-Pierre Reverdy, "Peine perdue" [Lost Cause], from La lucarne ovale [The Oval Skylight], 1916, my translation

"Time spent in a room where everything is dark will come back later on."
-Pierre Reverdy, "Plus tard" [Later On], from La lucarne ovale [The Oval Skylight], 1916, my translation

^On Cinema

===

Poemquotes 9

"He hunted the moon, he left the night."
-Pierre Reverdy, "Chacun sa part" [To Each His Share], from Poèmes en prose [Poems in Prose], 1915, my translation

"Beginning my studies the first step pleas'd me so much, / The mere fact consciousness, these forms, the power of motion"
-Walt Whitman, "Beginning My Studies", from Leaves of Grass, "Inscriptions", 1855-1892

"Spring comes adept with personnel, / Apt for the kill."
-John Ashbery, "Elegy", 1947, from Uncollected Poems

"Of course, there's no need to speak / 'On the level'* ['À l'horizontale'] / Though we no longer find anything to say to each other / While vertical [À la verticale']. / So, in order to kill time / Between this love-session and that, / I grab the newspaper, and my pen, / And I fill in / Both the A's and O's**."
[* “On the level,” “laying down [horizontal next to each other],” etc.]
[** Which is also to say, in accordance with the French pronunciation of the letters, “Both the ‘AH!’s and ‘OH!’s.”]
-Serge Gainsbourg, "Ce mortel ennui" [This Deadly Boredom], from Du chant à la une!... [Songs Torn from the Front Page!...], 1958, my translation

"The going of the glade-boat / Is like water flowing"
-Wallace Stevens, "The Load of Sugar-Cane", from Harmonium, 1923/1931

"I preside in the azure like a poorly-understood sphinx, / I combine a snow heart with the whiteness of swans; / I hate movement that shifts lines around, / And never do I weep, and never do I laugh."
-Charles Baudelaire, "La beauté" [Beauty], from Les fleurs du mal [The Flowers of Evil], "Spleen et Idéal" [Spleen and Ideal], 1857, my translation

"Sweet Levinsky, why so tearful, / sweet Levinsky don't be fearful, / sweet Levinsky here's your earful / of the angels chirping cheerful- / ly Levinsky, sweet Levinsky, / sweet Levinsky, sweet Levinsky."
-Allen Ginsberg, "Sweet Levinsky", 1949, from Empty Mirror: Gates of Wrath (1947-1952) in Collected Poems: 1947-1980 (itself collected in its entirety within Collected Poems: 1947-1997)

===