André Bréton (1896-1966) was at first a Dadaist. He later became a founder of Surrealism, for which he wrote
three manifestos (1924, 1930 and 1934).





Level Crossing

With a wave of the wand it had been flowers
And blood
The shaft of light settled on the frosted window
Nobody
Pfff it was obvious that space was overflowing
Then the pillow of air slipped beneath the sainfoin
Avalanches pricked up their heads
And shoulders shrugged in stone interiors
Eyes were still closed in cautious water
From the deep arose the triple collar
That was to become the pride of the wardrobe
And the song of the cicadas picked up a ticket
And the station was all strung out
And the woman sliced a boiled potato
On the knees of a huge white beast
In the studios of silent carpentry benches
The moon-plane smoothed the cutting sheets
And the grindstone sprouted its butterflies
On the edge of the paper I'm writing on.







No Basis

Art of days art of nights
The balance of injuries named Pardonne
Balance red and sensitive to a bird-flight's weight
When the snow-necked circus riders empty-handed
Drive their chariots of steam onto the dueling ground
I see it, this constantly deranged balance
I see the nicely behaved ibis
Returning from my heart's lake
Dream wheels enchant splendid grooves
High-rising on the shells of their robes
And astonishment darts about across the sea
Go hence ma chere aurore forgetting nothing of my life
Take these roses that climb in the pit of mirrors
Take the fluttering of all eyelashes
Take even the wires supporting the rope dancers
And water droplets
Art of days art of nights
I am at the window miles away in a terrorised city
Outside, men in opera hats follow each other at regular
Intervals
Like the rains I once loved
When the weather was fine
"A la rage de Dieu" is the name of a cabaret I visited
Yesterday
It is written on the white frontage in very pale lettering
But the mariner-women slipping behind the windows
Are too happy to be worried
No corpses here all killings undetected
Never the sky always the silence
Never freedom except for freedom.







Women by a Lake Made Iridescent by the Passage of a Swan

Their reveries bloom velvet flesh of a thought in proportion to the cyclopean eye
opened by lakes and whose fascinating fixed gaze was to be the terrible herald of
the Eternal Return. the beautiful traces converge where the heart innervates the
three base petals of the immense floating flower wasting away endlessly to be
reborn inflamed in stained glass. They are subjacent oratories so impious where
these fair ones retire, each with her secret. They arrive by flying carpet on the
marvellous cloud of the unknown. This is where vaporous alembics swarm and the
arm that reflects so exactly the neck of the swan points distractedly to the gentler
angle. Further, between the words, the slight breeze: le luxe is in la volupte - every
woman is La Dame du Lac.






A.C. Evans lives in London. His work appears in Slope #3.