Always for the first time

Today's poem comes coincidentally via RyanH., who read it out loud to me and Diana over morning coffee and tea. Last week R's friend Nico passed the Breton book on to Ryan at McCarthy's, our downtown Irish pub/dive bar. Ryan said that there he was, drinking beer, surrounded by noise and yer typical brew-ha-ha (pun intended), nose deep inside the breton.

Then I thought, how great to have a friend who'll read you poetry out loud over coffee and tea Sunday morning.

It is beautiful here today. Finally Spring weather. Sunny, bright and all the flowers hopping. And the bees buzzing. The wisteria has opened it's doors to the Big Bee Hostel once again.

Meanwhile, back to today's poem.

Always for the first time

Always for the first time
As if I hardly know what you look like
You come back at a certain time of night to a house at an angle to my window
A completely imaginary house
Where from one second to the next
In the unbroken darkness
I expect it to happen again the fascinating ripping
The one and only ripping
Of its facade and my heart
The closer I come to you
In reality
The more the key sings in the door of the unknown room
Where you appear for me all alone
First you are totally fused with the brightness
The fleeting angle of a curtain
It's a field of jasmine I've gazed on at dawn on a road just outside Grasse
With its diagonal of women pickers
Behind them the shadowy falling wing of stripped seedlings
In front of them the T-square of dazzlement
The curtain invisibly raised
All the flowers come back in a tumult
It's you in the grip of this long long hour never troubled enough till you fall asleep
You as though you could be
The same except that maybe I'll never meet you
You pretend not to know I watch you
Amazingly I'm no longer sure you know it
Your idleness brings tears to my eyes
A cloud of interpretations surrounds each of your movements
It's a hunt for honeydew
There are rocking chairs on a bridge there are branches trying to scratch you in the forest
In a shop window on the Rue Nortre-Dame-de-Lorette there are
Two beautiful crossed legs trapped in long stockings
That flare out at the center of a big white clover
There's
Only for me to lean over the cliff
Of the hopeless fusion of your presense and your absence
I've discovered the secret
Of always loving you
For the first time

— Andre Breton