Free Union

Thanks to yaaren I was forcibly reminded (again) of Andre Breton's poem Free Union, which I heard read by Cary Tennis on Salon.com, and which I consider a major turning point in my poetic imagination, an inspiration to most of the things I've written since the fateful moment I first heard it. So I transcribed the text from that reading and I go back to it often. I love it so much! I'm sure my posting it here is gauche because you normally have to buy Mary Ann Caws' book (which I have wanted to own for some time). Well, treating this as those sites do with various popular musicians, I present a transcript of the "lyrics" of the audio track. See if you can tell where it might have had an impact.

My love whose hair is woodfire her thoughts heat lightning her waist an hourglass
my love an otter in the tiger's jaws
her mouth a rosette bouquet of stars of the highest magnitude
her teeth footprints of white mice on white earth
her tongue smooth as amber and as glass
my love her tongue a sacred host stabbed through
her tongue a doll whose eyes close and open
her tongue a fantastic stone

each eyelash traced by a child's hand
her eyebrows the edge of a swallow's nest
my love her temples slates on a greenhouse roof
and their misted panes

my love whose shoulders are champagne
and the dolphin heads of a fountain under ice
my love whose wrists thin as matchsticks
whose fingers are chants and the ace of hearts
whose fingers are mowed hay

my love with marble and beechnut beneath her arms
of midsummer night of privet and the nests of angelfish
whose arms are sea-foam and the river locks and the mingling of wheat and mill
my love whose legs are fireworks moving like clockwork and despair
my love her calves of elder tree marrow
my love whose feet are initial letters
are keyrings and sparrows drinking
my love her neck pearled with barley
my love her throat of a golden valley rendezvous in the torrents very bed
her breasts of night
my love her breasts molehills beneath the sea crucibles of rubies
specter of the dew-sparkled rose
my love whose belly unfurls the fan of everyday its giant claws
whose back is a bird's vertical flight
whose back is quicksilver
whose back is light

the nape of her neck is crushed stone and damp chalk
and the fall of a glass where we just drank
why love whose hips are wherries
whose hips are chandeliers and feathers
and the stems of white peacock plumes imperceptible in their sway
my love whose buttocks are of sandstone of swan's back and amianthus
and of springtime

my love whose sex is gladiolus is placer and platypus
algae and sweets of yore is mirror

my love her eyes full of tears
of violet panoply and magnetic needle

my love of savannah eyes
my love her eyes of water to drink in prison
my love her eyes of wood always to be chopped
eyes of water level earth and air and fire
--Free Union, by Andre Breton