All the Schoolgirls Together
Sometimes you say marking the earth with your heel the way in a bush the eglantine grows
Wild as if it's made only of dew
You say The whole sea and the whole sky for a single
Childhood victory in the land of dance or better for a single
Embrace in the corridor of a train
Going to hell with gunshots on a bridge or better
Still for one savage word
The kind that a bleeding man whose name travels very far
From tree to tree woudl say as he looked at you
All he does is go in and out in the middle of a hundred snowbirds
Then where is this really
And when you say it the whole sea and the whole sky
Scatter like a thundercloud of girls in the playground of a strict boarding school
After a dictation exercise in which My heart's desire
Might have been written My heart's on fire
--Translated by Bill Zavatsky and Zack Rogow
Books by Breton in Burling Library:
Earthlight
On Display on the First Floor
Free Rein
Burling 3rd Floor PQ2603.R35 C513 1995
Manifestoes of Surrealism
Burling 1st Floor BH301.S75 B683 1969
Do you have a favorite poem that you'd like to appear here? Send it to bookreview@grinnell.edu
