8 Surreal Writers

Robert Desnos.

Under Cover Of Night – Poem

To slip into your shadow under cover of night.
To follow your footsteps, your shadow at the window.
That shadow at the window is you and no one else;
it’s you.
Do not open that window behind whose curtains you’re moving.
Shut your eyes.
I’d like to shut them with my lips.
But the window opens and the breeze, the breeze
which strangely balances flame and flag surrounds my escape
with its cloak.
The window opens: it’s not you.
I knew it all along.

Tristan Tzara.

Vegetable Swallow

 two smiles meet towards
the child-wheel of my zeal
the bloody baggage of creatures
made flesh in physical legends-lives

the nimble stags storms cloud over
rain falls under the scissors of
the dark hairdresser-furiously
swimming under the clashing arpeggios

in the machine's sap grass
grows around with sharp eyes
here the share of our caresses
dead and departed with the waves

gives itself up to the judgment of time
parted by the meridian of hairs
non strikes in our hands
the spices of human pleasures

Mike Russell

Aqua-birds

Oh look, it’s one of those aqua-birds! They are common here in the desert. See the large, skin sack that hangs from its throat? That is full of water. Tragically, all aqua-birds birds are completely unaware of this fact. Constantly thirsty, they fly around the desert in search of something to drink. The aqua-birds’ thirst induces hallucinations of extraordinarily beautiful and ornate birdbaths. Look, this bird has seen one now! See how it dives towards the ground. Now see as it lands and pecks at the sand, bemused, the mirage having disappeared. Now see as it takes flight again to continue its search.

The desert is surrounded by an ocean. The nest where the aqua-birds are born is in the centre of the desert. Each aqua-bird is born with enough water in its throat-sack to sustain it for three days. An aqua-bird can survive without water for twenty days, no more, no less. It would take an aqua-bird twenty three days to fly from the centre of the desert to the ocean. The perimeter of the desert is strewn with dead aqua-birds.

Hear the poor aqua-bird’s cries. If only it would swallow.

Strange Medicine by Mike Russell
Louis Aragon
Louis Aragon

Louis Aragon
Arthur Rimbaud.

Novel – Poem

I.

No one’s serious at seventeen.
–On beautiful nights when beer and lemonade
And loud, blinding cafés are the last thing you need
–You stroll beneath green lindens on the promenade.

Lindens smell fine on fine June nights!
Sometimes the air is so sweet that you close your eyes;
The wind brings sounds–the town is near–
And carries scents of vineyards and beer. . .

II.

–Over there, framed by a branch
You can see a little patch of dark blue
Stung by a sinister star that fades
With faint quiverings, so small and white. . .

June nights! Seventeen!–Drink it in.
Sap is champagne, it goes to your head. . .
The mind wanders, you feel a kiss
On your lips, quivering like a living thing. . .

III.

The wild heart Crusoes through a thousand novels
–And when a young girl walks alluringly
Through a streetlamp’s pale light, beneath the ominous shadow
Of her father’s starched collar. . .

Because as she passes by, boot heels tapping,
She turns on a dime, eyes wide,
Finding you too sweet to resist. . .
–And cavatinas die on your lips.

IV.

You’re in love. Off the market till August.
You’re in love.–Your sonnets make Her laugh.
Your friends are gone, you’re bad news.
–Then, one night, your beloved, writes. . .!

That night. . .you return to the blinding cafés;
You order beer or lemonade. . .
–No one’s serious at seventeen
When lindens line the promenade.
Daniil Kharms.
<Kalindov>

Kalindov was standing on tiptoe and peering at me straight in the face. I found this unpleasant. I turned aside but Kalindov ran round me and was again peering at me straight in the face. I tried shielding myself from Kalindov with a newspaper. But Kalindov outwitted me: he set my newspaper alight and, when it flared up, I dropped it on the floor and Kalindov again began peering at me straight in she face. Slowly retreating, I repaired behind the cupboard and there, for a few moments, I enjoyed a break from the importunate stares of Kalindov. But my break was not prolonged: Kalindov crawled up to the cupboard on all fours and peered up at me from below. My patience ran out; I screwed up my eyes and booted Kalindov in the face. When I opened my eyes, Kalindov was standing in front of me, his mug bloodied and mouth lacerated, peering at me straight in the face as before.

1930
John Ashbery
John Ashbery
Zoltan Komor
Zoltan Komor

Born in Debrecen, Hungary