Under Cover of Night

by Robert Desnos, 1926

To slip into your shadow under cover of darkness.
To follow your steps, your shadow at the window.
That shadow at the window is you, it is no one else, it’s you.
Don’t open that window where you’re moving behind the curtains.
Close your eyes.
I would like to close them with my lips.
But the window opens and the wind, the wind that bizarrely juggles the flame and the flag, surrounds my escape with its cloak.
The window opens: it is not you.
I knew it all along.

From the sequence To the One of Mystery (A la mysterieuse), 1926. Translated from the French by Bill Zavatsky.