In I Capture the Castle there's a young man who keeps leaving love-poems for the narrator, which he's copied out of books (Herrick mostly, I think) but pretends are his own. It's endearing in the book, so I guess I can hope my new habit of thieving from French poets will be too. (By the way, did anyone see the movie of I Capture the Castle? Was it any good? It's hard for me to picture translating that wonderful narrative voice to film. Seems like it would go flat, like those disastrous attempts to make TV episodes out of Wodehouse stories.)


Words do not Lie

--pour la tigresse du soleil, volé á Paul Eluard

Wasps flowering green;
The dawn threads around its throat
A necklace of windows;
Wings cover the leaves.

You have all the sunlit joys --
All the sun upon the earth,
Upon the roads of your beauty.

The earth is blue as an orange.
The inroads of your beauty
Are exact; never an error;
If your friends have heard lies from the earth,
Then believe me, they have not listened closely.
Words do not lie.