POEMS BY ARTHUR CRAVAN

The drinker of eyes, Bendorp sonnet

Eyes black with the clarity of a diamond or agathis to have for nights with starless skies. Weary,
he tilts his head toward you, lovingly and jokingly, as he would to a child. For the late love, a fire
stirs the soul that enflames everything through such green eyes with strange neurosis and
perversity which persecutes with uncatchable, obsessive fear. At this restless hour, he sees then
as their own entity. Brilliant, lively gems in the claws of eyelashes; eyes of coralline and opal.
When night falls, muttering the halves of words by an armchair, falling on his back, he distills
and absinthe and sips a Bendorp cream!!!

Nonsense
Your eyes are a stream and I am a river man. When captive pains submerge and escalate, flowing
the bath in a soft cascade, they look like polished, hard rocks on the small of your back. Frail
satchel of musk, roman and amber, they move through your cool current in an arch, a more
sinister black than the night of an ambush, and I leave on the waves, miraculously marine.
Leaving your hair to touch your lips; fainting in the depths of your vapid eyes; in a boat of
dreams with no direction. Dying to violins in the fingers of the virtuosos and on the breasts of the
sea from the peninsula of the gulf, covering everything in exquisite pink clouds!

Rondo
Rosacea. A straightening up, a glass, and facial hair. This is what master chefs and pedants talk
about, old hags and the proud, in long debates and small talk, so goes the ransom of old age.
Their virtue is in wisdom, in never having lost a tooth, rosacea. But hell! It is the season of the
green corsage and the blue swallow has migrated. The island wine says, be imprudent! Rain
down your kisses in a smooth flood and give me the wisdom of a broken rose!

Solo of the night

My dear child, my bratty brat, only an obstinate gentleman could play such a Lento on the
mandolin. With the tender brush of a breeze like a satin sleeve, we taste the Neapolitan night,
suave as a praline. What an exquisite jolt in the heart. An enchanted bird, vehement nightingale.
We listen, if you can call it listening, to the sentimental romance. Your eyes act like the moon.

Sad night
A night of solitude, a night of poverty,

Where ennui, your dog, stretches across your knees,

As solitary remorse gnaws

At your heart, a worm that gnaws a half-eaten fruit.

The night continues its unconsoling passage

Mistily confused by the eyes of a dream,

Its veil of glass distorts all lies.

Its an October night with a veiled face.

The wind sings, the grandmother of autumn,

Spinning on the wheel a monotone,

Weaving a pensive sky and a gray sleep.

On the outskirts, I shoot the Persians

And I stroll for a long time, walking around

My memories stored in an ancient gallery.