Dejeuner du Matin
Poem by Jacques Prévert
Jacques Prévert was born in 1900 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. When he had finished his schooling at age 15, he took a series of odd jobs, then joined the army in 1920, where he met Yves Tanguy and later Marcel Duhamel. In 1922 he returned to Paris, where he associated with the young leaders of the Surrealist movement: Desnos, Malkine, Aragon, Leiris, Artaud and André Breton. Eventually he broke with Breton. He is known for his poetry, which is simple and evocative, and known also as a screenwriter, collaborating on "Le Crime de Monsieur Lange" (1935) for Jean Renoir, for example, and "Les enfants du paradis" (1944) for Marcel Carné. Upon his death, Carné wrote of him in the New York Times that "His humour and poetry succeeded in raising the banal to the summit of art."
Prévert's poetry collections include Histoires (1946), Poèmes (1961) and some dozen others; his complete works were published in the Pléiade series by Gallimard in 1992.
"Déjeuner du matin" by Jacques Prévert
Il a mis le café
Dans la tasse
Il a mis le lait
Dans la tasse de café
Il a mis le sucre
Dans le café au lait
Avec la petite cuiller
Il a tourné
Il a bu le café au lait
Et il a reposé la tasse
Sans me parler
Il a allumé
Une cigarette
Il a fait des ronds
Avec la fumée
Il a mis les cendres
Dans le cendrier
Sans me parler
Sans me regarder
Il s'est levé
Il a mis
Son chapeau sur sa tête
Il a mis son manteau de pluie
Parce qu'il pleuvait
Et il est parti
Sous la pluie
Sans une parole
Sans me regarder
Et moi j'ai pris
Ma tête dans ma main
Et j'ai pleuré
To listen to this poem being read click here.
Prévert's poetry collections include Histoires (1946), Poèmes (1961) and some dozen others; his complete works were published in the Pléiade series by Gallimard in 1992.
The above illustration is by Marion Powles who, inspired by the poem, painted the watercolour for an art class. Merci Marion.