The Absence

“I speak to you across cities

I speak to you across plains

My mouth is upon your pillow

Both faces of the wall come meeting

My voice discovering you

I speak to you of eternity

O cities memories of cities

Cities wrapped in our desires

Cities come early cities come lately

Cities strong and cities secret

Plundered of their master’s builders

All their thinkers all their ghosts

Fields pattern of emerald

Bright living surviving

The harvest of the sky over our earth

Feeds my voice I dream and weep

I laugh and dream among the flames

Among the clusters of the sun

And over my body your body spreads

The sheet of its bright mirror.

- Paul Eluard, “The Absence” (1942)