FRANCAIS CHANSONS

H:Anaïs, I don’t know how to tell you what I feel. I live in perpetual expectancy. You come and the time slips away in a dream. It is only when you go that I realize completely your presence. And then it is too late. You numb me. This is a little drunken, Anaïs. I am saying to myself, “Here is the first woman with whom I can be absolutely sincere.” I remember your saying—”You could fool me, I wouldn’t know it.” When I walk along the boulevards and think of that. I can’t fool you—and yet I would like to. I mean that I can never be absolutely loyal—it’s not in me. I love women, or life, too much—which it is, I don’t know. But laugh, Anaïs, I love to hear you laugh. You are the only woman who has a sense of gaiety, a wise tolerance—no more, you seem to urge me to betray you. I love you for that. I don’t know what to expect of you, but it is something in the way of a miracle. I am going to demand everything of you—even the impossible, because you encourage it. You are really strong. I even like your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me.

A: During the nuit blanche I think: Henry, my love, I can love you better now that you cannot hurt me. I can love you more gaily. More loosely. I can endure space and distance and betrayals. Only the best, the best and the strongest. Henry, my love, the wanderer, the artist, the faithless one who has loved me so well. Believe me, nothing has changed in me toward you except my courage. I cannot walk with one love ever. My head is strong, my head, but to walk, to walk into love I need miracles, the miracles of excess, and white heat, and two-ness! Lie here, breathing into my hair, over my neck. No hurt will come from me. No criticalness, no judgment. I bear you in my womb.