Plutot la vie

Rather Life
For Philippe Soupault

Rather life than those prisms without depth even if the colours are purer
Rather than that always clouded hour those terrible wagons of cold flames
Than those soft stones
Rather this triggered heart
Than this murmuring mere
And that white cloth singing in the air and in the earth
That nuptial blessing linking my brow to the brow of absolute vanity
Rather Life

Rather life with its conspiring sheets
Its escape stars

Rather life rather this rose-window on my grave
The life of presence nothing but presence
Where a voice says Are you there
where another answers are you there
I am very little there alas
And yet even if we play into the hands of what we
cause to die
Rather life