RENE DAUMAL


MEMORABLES
Translation: Louise Landes Levi

Remember: your mother and your father, and your first lie, the
indiscrete odor of which crawls in your memory.

Remember your first insult to those who made you, the
seed of pride was sown, the crack glistened, breaking the
night one.

Remember the evenings of terror when the thought of the
void scratched your stomach, and always returned like a vulture,
to nibble you and remember the morning of sun in the room.

Remember the night of deliverance, when, your untied body
falling like a veil, you breathed a little from the incorruptible
air; and remember the clammy animals that took you back again.

Remember magics, fish and tenacious dreams - you wanted to
see, you stopped up your two eyes in order to see, without knowing
how to open the other.

Remember your accomplices and your deceits, and that great
desire to leave the cage.

Remember the day when you split open the web and were
taken’ alive', fixed in place, in the uproar of uproars the wheel of wheels
turning without turning, you inside, always snatched up by the same
immobile moment, repeated, repeated, and time was making one turn
only, everything turned in those innumerable directions, the time
curled up backwards - and the eyes of flesh saw only a dream,
there only existed the devouring silence, words were dried skins
and the noise, the yes, the noise, the no, the visible howl and
darkness of the machine denied you - the silent cry, 'I am' that
the bone hears, form which the stone dies, form which that which
never was believes to die, - and you were reborn in each instant
only to be denied by the great circle without boundaries, all pure
all center, pure , except you.

And remember the days that followed, when you walked like a
bewitched corpse, with the certainty of being eaten by the
infinite, of being annulled by the only existing Absurd.

And above all, remember the day when you wanted to throw
out everything, no matter how, - but a guardian kept watch in
your night, he kept watch while you dreamed, he made you touch
your flesh, he made you remember your own, he made you gather
your rags, - remember your guardian.

Remember the beautiful mirage of concepts, and moving words,
palaces of mirrors built in a cave, and remember the man who came,
who broke everything, who took you with his rough hand, pulled you
from your dreams, and made you sit in the thorns of the full day
and remember that you do not know how to remember yourself.

Remember that you have to pay for everything, remember your
happiness but when your heart was run over, it was too late to
pay in advance.

Remember the friend who spread out his reason to gather
your tears, spurting from the frozen source, violating the sun
of spring.

Remember that love triumphed when she and you knew how to
submit to its jealous fire, praying to die in the same flame.

But remember that love is of no one, that in your heart of
flesh is no one, that the sun is of no one, blush seeing the
swamp of your heart.

Remember the mornings when grace was like a raised club
that led you,submissive through yours days, - happy, the cattle
beneath the yoke.

And remember that your poor memory let the golden fish flow
between its numbed fingers.

Remember those who say to you: Remember - remember the
voice that said to you: don't fall - and remember the dubious
pleasure of the fall.

Remember: poor memory, mine, the two faces of the medallion
and its unique metal.


1943

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Translation: Louise Landes Levi (reprinted with permission of the translator)

Originally printed in Relationship, MAITREA 5,Shambhala, Berkeley & London, 1974