Ars Poetica from the Protector of Asses, André Breton dixit

My little Andean burro with almond eyes, which ache facing the sun.

My little burro with eyes of fox tracks in snow.

My agile little burro descending from that  yellow rise with reclining lioness figure.

My little burro eating salmon slices from asbestos mats,

feet parted,

noontime blue,

with a shirt striped

under the lattice of light and shade dropped by an arcade.

My little Beirut burro carrying a vagabond bird civilization on his back.

My little burro inside a woman’s thoughts on a Madras beach.

My little Andean burro who, in a constellation, finds the silhouette of an annihilated body. 

My little burro weighty as an ear of wheat,

as teeth with the gleam of a knife in moonlight,

as a smile shy like the tail on a scorpion.

My little burro of a belltower’s Yes,

of the No from a hatchet above a lamb’s head,

from the scepter above the pessimist’s head.

My little silver burro with forest fur shot through by sunlight.

My little cargo burro with clavicles from the Black Christ of poisons,

with the silence of an empty gallery,

a fleeting valley by the highway.

My little burro with the gait of a burning village,

a meditation by the weathervane rooster topping the highest point on the Church.

My little burro with hips of a boat in water, hips of figs closely bunched.

My little burro in the dream of an Icelandic horse.

My little burro of marmot loneliness inside prey,

eyelashes on a deer fleeing to the dark side of the rise,

lines eyelashed across the wall of a jail.

My little burro with a soul ecstatic under the starry sky:

reed flute crushed under the winged feet of my little downcast burro,

eating from a Rose undecided between perfume and death.

My little thief-eyed burro, surprised by an ambush.

My little burro from Puno, dispirited by the first snowflakes on October’s rockface.

My little burro of oblivion from a butterfly catching fire mid-air.

My little burro of intelligence placed on the earth to shame the wise.

My little burro and his melancholy capable of creating port cities,

iceboats and women who, having just taken their leave at the keels, disappear.