Liberté et Le Poète

The first time I saw this large tapesty, Le Poète designed by Jean Lurçat, was over 30 years ago when it was hanging in the Rehearsal Room on the Lower Ground floor of Old Broadcasting House.  It was presented to the BBC in 1949 on behalf of the French people, to thank the Corporation for its wartime broadcasting which helped the Resistance movement, including a defiant rallying address by General Charles de Gaulle urging his people not to capitulate to the Nazis.  The tapesty was said to be based on the poem Liberté by Paul Éluard, translated here into English (though far better in the original French) -


On my school notebooks
On my desk and on the trees
On the sands, on the 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 kings
I write your name

On the jungle and the desert
On the nest and on the briar
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 breath of daybreak
On the sea, on the boats
On the wild mountaintop
I write your name

On the froth of the cloud
On the sweat of the storm
On the heavy and dull rain
I write your name

On the flickering figures
On the bells of colours
On the natural truth
I write your name

On the high paths
On the well-worn roads
On the crowd-thronged square
I write your name

On the lamp which is lit
On the lamp which isn’t
On my houses combined
I write your name

On a fruit cut in two
On my mirror and my chamber
On my bed, an empty shell
I write your name

On my dog, big-hearted 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 flames 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 the walls of my boredom
I write your name

On absence without desire
On naked solitude
On the marches of death
I write your name

And by the power of a word
I renew my life
For I was born to know you
To name you

Liberty.