Editors' Note: Shuzo Takiguchi (1903–1979) was a major Japanese Surrealist poet, as well as an artist and art critic. "Document d'Oiseaux: Official Report on Birds" was first published in 1929.
The angel that joined the Koi constellation stared into the mirror of a plum blossom’s pistil and saw me for the first time. He decorated my hair with wheat flowers, and then ran off. When spring arrives, a fish with a lovely heart steals the angel’s clothes. This experiment is performed at my fingertips, which are teeming with buds. Waves roar nearby behind glass. This first dinner grew out of an instinctual conversation between the season’s first snow on my fingernails and my underarm waterfalls. My eyelashes are already tinted the color of the setting sun when my angel exits a large fruit market, becoming almost invisible. I disavow this angel’s occupation. Then I cut this peach-like angel the way I would break a doll in two. He was a blissful angel. Right there, one sad green shell explodes. I am a dangerous virgin. Even the rose that so expertly seduces me is nothing but a flounder eternally swimming. Look at the pure yellow sun that rises like a pebble up the nape of my neck.
This is purely a virgin’s imagination. Now, I give feathers to every bird that flies through my gold-hoop earrings. I give a star’s flight suit to every breeze. My miracle was to become pregnant with an enormous cluster of sky-diamonds. By the light of the fish, the angel’s shadow falls over me. His smile was truly a miracle. His voice had the effect of an infinite fortress, an incomparably transparent spider’s web. His lips have already fossilized yet remain vividly red. You beautiful angel, like an entire cat breed whose name can no longer be recalled. I wish I could again pass through your soul, that quartz-like barley grain. I thank the granite with blood in its veins. The rain shower is both a Hydrangea express train and also the angel’s assassin. The virgin stabbed by a sap-filled rainbow, that’s me. The core of the eagle eventually longs for the angel’s rose-colored hair. It’s an ideal universal attraction. The terrifying result is that again this spring, violets bloomed on the crests of waves. All seashores are omnipotent, and the trunk of the pine tree has also conceived an Apollo. Look at the photograph of the innocent devil in its heartwood. It shines more brightly than a diamond. O Angel. Does a neon sign under the bark of this pine predict your future? The blue-sky cadaver of the angel who reached out his hand right here. A bird is good-natured. Its mother is also good-natured. I, who am expecting, go into the sea with both joy and a bright candle. Is this harmful to birds? No, now is the season when all harms are extinguished. The purely aesthetic iceberg is also now in the gestational phase. Even the single goldfish atop the fortress wall is glittering. On the ultimate seashore, a cigar is burning. This recent phenomenon in the aquarium is a secret. The air is an exquisite boneless princess. She is a Madonna inside a straw. White-rose-like jewels are dropped in the public square of its pharynx. That white world was neither an island nor a bird. This memory alone will turn me into a devil. When morning comes, the angels all get out of bed. They once again expose their eternally immortal breasts. The morning breeze was once again invigorating.
Because I stole a glance at a god sculpting a peach, I die. I am dead with a magnificent breast in my mouth, embracing a bouquet of sky-blue roses. It’s a youthful adventure. Neither flies nor jewels are surprised. This is because the sea is nothing more than a new musical instrument. The lion that trumpets the spring with his beautiful voice, having opened his cobalt-blue parasol, was a perfect celestial body that can’t tell the difference between a morning glory and a human being. That was quite a spectacle. A theatre on the horizon line. Outside, four seasons, birds of love are twittering. On the subject of a fur seal turning into a seven-stringed zither, don’t say a word. The shadowless sun is the yacht on which I travel. A pure-white sacred horse can be seen prancing on deck. At the moment, the Muse is busy applying her make-up, so see the Official Report on Birds.
