Three by David Gascoyne

Yves Tanguy

The worlds are breaking in my head
Blown by the brainles wind
That comes from afar
Swollen with dusk and dust
And hysterical rain


The fading cries of night
Awaken the endless desert
Engrossed in its tropical slumber
Enclosed by the dead grey oceans
Enclasped by the arms of the night


The worlds are breaking in my head
Their fragments are crumbs of despair
The food of the solitary damned
Who awaits the gross tumult of turbulent
Days bringing change without end


The worlds are breaking in my head
The fuming future sleeps no more
For their seeds are beginning to grow
To creep and to cry midst the
Rocks of the desert to come

Planetary seed
Sown by the grotesque wind
Whose head us so swollen with rumours
Whose hands are so urgent with tumours
Whose feet are so deep in the sand.



The Cage

In the waking night
The forests have stopped growing
The shells are listening
The shadows in the pools turn grey
The pearls dissolve in the shadow
And I return to you


Your face is marked upon the clockface
My hands are beneath your hair
And if the time you mark sets free to birds
And if they fly away towards the forest
The hour will no longer be ours


Ours is the ornate birdcage
The brimming cup of water
The preface to the book
And all the clocks are ticking
All the dark rooms are moving
All the air's nerves are bare


Once flown
The feathered hour will not return
And I shall have gone away


Ex Nihilio

There am i now down
Beneath the black glare of a netherworld's
Dead suns, dust in my mouth, among
Dun tiers no tears refresh: am cast
Down by a lofty hand,
Hand that I love! Lord Light,
How dark is thy arm's will and ironlike
Thy ruler's fingers that has sent me here!
Far from thy face I nothing understand,
But kiss the hand that has consigned


Me to these latter years where I must learn
The revelation of despair, and find
Among the debris of all certainties
The hardest stone on which to found
Altar and shelter for Eternity.