Robert Desnos

I’ve Dreamed of You So Much

I’ve dreamed of you so much that you’re losing your reality.
Is it already too late for me to embrace your living and breathing body
and to kiss that mouth which is the birthplace of that voice so dear to me?
I’ve dreamed of you so much that my arms, grown accustomed to lying crossed upon my own chest in a desperate attempt to encircle your shadow, might not be able to unfold again to embrace the contours of your body.
And coming face-to-face with the actual incarnation of what has haunted me and ruled me and dominated my life for so many days and years
might very well turn me into a shadow.
Oh equilibriums of the emotional scales!
I’ve dreamed of you so much that it might be too late for me to ever wake up again.
I sleep on my feet, body confronting all the usual phenomena of life and love, and yet when it comes to you,
the only being on the planet who matters to me now,
I can no more touch your face and lips than I can those of the next random passerby.
I’ve dreamed of you so much, have walked and talked and slept so much with your phantom presence that perhaps the only thing left for me to do now
is to become a phantom among phantoms, a shadow a hundred times more shadowy
than that shadow which moves and will go on moving,
stepping lightly and joyfully across the sundial of your life.

A la mystérieuse 1926

Maze Drawing 104 by Tony Chapman