I
Bound, because all that can be said of her confines her, limits her. In the smallest space through the narrowest of viewpoints we sift the signs, minutely seeking the place of her heart; we weigh the value of faith in infancy.
II
We never hear her speak about her country, or her parents. She fears an answer from nothingness, the kiss of a mute mouth. Agile and loose-limbed, a slender girl-mother, she throws to the ground the mantle of walls and paints the day as she fancies. She frightens animals and children. She makes cheeks paler and the grass more cruelly green.
III
In the children’s wardrobe there are enchanted lights, a loaded pistol which inspires fear, a transparent fountain, a stone pool with water overflowing from it on to a bed of opals, a shoe less hunter, a girl with no hair,, a boat on the sea and the sailor sings, a horse cloaked in damask, a traveling theater, a cricket, some white feathers which fell from a dove’s nest, some little baskets with heart-shaped centers filled with pink cream, a guitar which gives off sparks, and a dress which will be forever new.
IV
Puffing out her cheeks, greedy, swallowing a flower, fragrant inner skin.Mouth of necessity
pink, even on the gable of the darkest black forest.
V
Where the birds do not sing, what have we not been weaned from? Where corn does not grow, what can we hope for? This world without love, bereft of sun, what is it to us? It had been very cold and we were very hungry. Fear was with us, in the house, outside, extinguishing everything. Death, the last twitch of the imagination. A snake slid beneath the house, which collapsed in ruins.
VI
The heavy beetle reaches noon. Hard round flames encircle a day of thick mud, like abandoned looms set out around poverty. Man, looking out for trouble, forgets the day, keeps his head down and loses. Earth, a shadow between drawn curtains, overwhelms hills, fills in valleys, and joins up bridges.
VII
Night shines in its own way, from the eye to the heart. Night effaces perception, the only pure space.
VIII
In the house with unjoined timbers and cracks in the roof, on the staircase whose steps are clad in old shoes, she sits sturdy, rough-cut, and opaque. In a word, she is alone. Alone in her clammy chambers, alone, without her eyes, implacably alone. It is elsewhere that clean air plummets down on to the semblance of a shared life.
IX
There were insults that undressed her, made her piteous
-or desirable.
VARIATION:
Well, beautiful. Farewell, pebbles more shiny than hidden, unobtainable gold. From now on the road runs between your shoulders, beneath dark caravans of seed. All of it still subsists at the tender awakening, to cover your shoulders with. The road avoids statues.
X
In the winter at five in the morning she got up and, scarcely dressed, went out to gather dead wood. She could have died for the pity she felt foe herself.
VARIATION:
Straw mixed with grain, smoke mixed with fire, pity mixed with pain.
XI
Blood and dust, a dash of milk, adash of clear water, ten hand needles, rushing, in the stitches of the pillow. A knob of hay in the barn, a knob of gum in the well, a knob of nothing here. The insides of the sheets as a mirror. A splash of tigers on her nails and heavy flowers of ink on her lips, the merest pinch of earth.
XII
Lined with white satin, weighing on the shadow, small head with a gleam of gold, lined with fear, small head on her muzzle, subject to the rule of great winds, in the milk of inner days, star on a hatching egg, forgetting everything, small voice, great clamor, she pays out the thread of her flying and nothing can hold her back.
XIII
It’s a girl! – Where are her eyes? – It’s a girl! – Where are her breasts? – It’s a girl! – What is she saying? – It’s a girl! – What is she playing? – It’s a girl, it is my desire!
XIV
The open space contains breasts, ahead on a delicate neck, and the germ of light deep in her eyes that hold no secrets.
HANS BELLMER “the games of the doll”
