Hello, By Benjamin Peret

My plane on fire my castle inundated by Rhine wine

my ghetto of black iris my crystal ear

my rock rolling down the cliff to crush the sheriff

my opal snail my air mosquito

my eiderdown of birds of paradise my hair of black foam

my tomb burst asunder my rain of red grasshoppers

my flying island my turquoise grape

my collision of crazy and cautious cars my wild flower bed

my dandelion pistil shot in my eye

my tulip onion in the brain

my gazelle wandered into a cinema on the boulevard

my casket of sunlight my volcano fruit

my laugh of hidden pond in which absent-minded prophets are going to drown

my inundation of cassis my morel butterfly

my blue waterfall like a deep wave that makes the spring

my coral revolver with a mouth that attracts me like the eye of a well

scintillating

frozen like a mirror in which you contemplate the flight of the hummingbirds of your glance

lost in an exhibition of white framed by mummies

I love you

From “Modern Poets of France: A Bilingual Anthology,” selected and translated by Louis Simpson (Story Line Press: 320 pp., $16.95)