Born.

Johnson, A Ride for Liberty—The Fugitive Slaves, 1862

LIBERTY

On my school notebooks

On my desk and on the trees

On the sands of snow

I write your name

On the pages I have read

On all the white pages

Stone, blood, paper or ash

I write your name

On the images of gold

On the weapons of the warriors

On the crown of the king

I write your name

On the jungle and the desert

On the nest and on the brier

On the echo of my childhood

I write your name

On all my scarves of blue

On the moist sunlit swamps

On the living lake of moonlight

I write your name

On the fields, on the horizon

On the birds’ wings

And on the mill of shadows

I write your name

On each whiff of daybreak

On the sea, on the boats

On the demented mountaintop

I write your name

On the froth of the cloud

On the sweat of the storm

On the dense rain and the flat

I write your name

On the flickering figures

On the bells of colors

On the natural truth

I write your name

On the high paths

On the deployed routes

On the crowd-thronged square

I write your name

On the lamp which is lit

On the lamp which isn’t

On my reunited thoughts

I write your name

On a fruit cut in two

Of my mirror and my chamber

On my bed, an empty shell

I write your name

On my dog, greathearted and greedy

On his pricked-up ears

On his blundering paws

I write your name

On the latch of my door

On those familiar objects

On the torrents of a good fire

I write your name

On the harmony of the flesh

On the faces of my friends

On each outstretched hand

I write your name

On the window of surprises

On a pair of expectant lips

In a state far deeper than silence

I write your name

On my crumbled hiding-places

On my sunken lighthouses

On my walls and my ennui

I write your name

On abstraction without desire

On naked solitude

On the marches of death

I write your name

And for the want of a word

I renew my life

For I was born to know you

To name you

Liberty.

Paul Eluard