Always for the first time
I barely know you by sight
You return at some hour of night to a house diagonal from my window
An imaginary house
Where from one second to the next
In perfect darkness
I wait for the magic splitting to happen
A single tear
In the wall and in my heart
The closer I get to you
In real life
The more the key sings in the door of an unknown room
Where you appear to me alone
Where you first melt into brilliant light
Into the stray angle of a curtain
Into the field of jasmine I saw at dawn on a road in the province of
Grasse
With the diagonal arc of the harvesting girls
Behind them the dark falling wing of plants stripped bare
Before them a square bracket of dazzling light
The curtain raised invisibly
The flowers all returning in fury
It is you face to face with an hour too long never dark enough for sleep
You as if you could be
The same except that I might never meet you
You pretend not to know I see you
Miraculously I’m no longer sure you do
Your lazy lingering fills my eyes with tears
A swarm of meanings surrounds each of your gestures
This is a hunt for honey
There are rocking chairs on a deck there are branches that will scratch you in the forest
There’s a shop window on Notre-Dame-de-Lorette Street
Two lovely crossed legs caught in stockings
Spreading out from the center of a great white clover
There’s a silk ladder rolled out across the ivy
There’s
A way that by gazing into the void and into your absence
I’ve found the secret
Of loving you
Always for the first time

                           André Breton

Hear the Poem

 

About the Poet

André Robert Breton was a French writer and poet, the co-founder, leader, and principal theorist of surrealism. His writings include the first Surrealist Manifesto of 1924, in which he defined surrealism as “pure psychic automatism.”

“Always For The First Time” by Andre Breton is a love story. It is a story about a man’s longing for love and affection. The poem is written as a love note to a woman he has never met or someone he is hoping to meet one day in the future.

About the Pollination Garden

The Pollination Garden is a celebration of our native flora and fauna, particularly the species local to the Palos Verdes Peninsula. In the style of French garden designer and nurseryman, Olivier Filippi, this garden showcases the colors, textures and forms of the coastal sage scrub in a naturalistic but curated style. The majority of the plant palette are native Californian species sourced from the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy and the Theodore Payne Foundation, but there is a sprinkling of plants from the other Mediterranean-climates and annual flowers for seasonal interest. As the garden grows and matures, we will start to see the undulating effect of the design. Native plants are great choices to plant in the garden, since Southern California is home, they need much less tending and water than conventional garden plants.

About Native Plants

Native plants and animals are indigenous to a particular region of the world. For example, the honeybee (Apis mellifera) is not indigenous to California, rather they originate from Europe. Whereas the squash bee (Peponapis pruinosa) is indigenous to California and is specialized at pollinating squashes and relatives. Our native flora and pollinators have evolved together and rely on each other to complete their life cycles. Plants provide food as a host or nectar plant and habitat in the form of shelter, while pollinators ensure that plants bear fruit for animals and seeds for the next generation. Plant some native plants in your garden to help recreate habitat for our local fauna in an urbanizing world.

We want to thank the South Coast Chapter of the California Native Plant Society for their generous support which will go towards caring for the native plants in the Pollination Garden.
 

Want to learn more about California native plants and gardening in a Mediterranean climate? Check these resources out: