No, Love Is Not Dead

by Robert Desnos
No, love is not dead in this heart these eyes and this mouththat
announced the start of its own funeral.Listen, I've had enough of the
picturesque, the colorfuland the charming.I love love, its tenderness and
cruelty.My love has only one name, one form.Everything disappears. All
mouths cling to that one.My love has just one name, one form.And if
someday you rememberO you, form and name of my love,One day on the
ocean between America and Europe,At the hour when the last ray of light
sparkleson the undulating surface of the waves, or else a stormy night
beneath a tree in the countryside or in a speeding car,A spring morning on
the boulevard Malesherbes,A rainy day,Just before going to bed at dawn,
Tell yourself-I order your familiar spirit-thatI alone loved you more and it's
a shameyou didn't know it.Tell yourself there's no need to regret: Ronsard
and Baudelaire before me sang the sorrowsof women old or dead who
scorned the purest love.When you are deadYou will still be lovely and
desirable.I'll be dead already, completely enclosed in your immortal body,
in your astounding image forever there among the endless marvelsof life
and eternity, but if I'm alive,The sound of your voice, your radiant looks,
Your smell the smell of your hair and many other thingswill live on inside
me.In me and I'm not Ronsard or Baudelaire

I'm Robert Desnos who, because I knewand loved you,Is as good as they
are.I'm Robert Desnos who wants to be rememberedOn this vile earth for
nothing but his love of you.

A la mysterieuse