Robert Desnos

 

I Have Dreamed You So Much

I have dreamed you so much
that you are no longer real.
Is there still time to reach your living body
and to kiss your mouth, cradle
of the voice I love best?

I have dreamed you so much
that my arms, used to holding
your shadow across my chest,
might no longer reach around
the shape of your body,
and that, before the haunting
that’s ruled me days and years,
I’d surely become a shadow too.

O calculations of the heart.

I have dreamed you so much
that it might be too late to wake.
I sleep standing, my body exposed
to all manifestations of life and love for you,
the only things that count for me today.
But I can less touch your face, your lips,
than the first lips, the first face to come my way.

I have dreamed you so much,
walked, talked, slept with your ghost so much,
that there may be nothing left to do
than to become a ghost among ghosts
and a shadow a hundred times more shadow
than the one who wanders
around the sundial of your life.

                                            tr. Paul Winfield