Moonlight

Your soul is like a painter's landscape where charming masks in shepherd mummeries are playing lutes and dancing with an air of being sad in their fantastic guise. Even while they sing, all in a minor key, of love triumphant and life's careless boon, they seem in doubt of their felicity, their song melts in the calm light of the moon, the lovely melancholy light that sets the little birds to dreaming in the tree and among the statues makes the jets of slender fountains sob with ecstacy.
-- translated by C. F. MacIntyre

In That Cafe Crowded with Fools We Stood

In that cafe crowded with fools we stood
Just us two for the hideous turpitude
of liking men; they never thought, the cunts.
We sat on their dim-witted innocence
Their standard loves, their tiny gold rules
While holding to our principles and tools
We swung and parried to our heart's content
Veiled in a cloud on peaceful pipes had sent
Like Zeus and Hera in their nebulous bed
Till our two Punch noses glad and red
Wiped by our fingers with delightful squeezed
Under our table jetted great white sneezes.

Pensionnaires

The one was fifteen years old, the other sixteen
And they both slept in the same little room.
It happened on an oppressive
September eve--
Fragile things! blue-eyed with cheeks of ivory.
To cool their frail bodies each removed
Her dainty chemise fresh with the perfume of amber.
The younger raised her hands and bent backwards,
And her sister, her hands on her breasts, kissed her.
Then fell on her knees, and, in a frenzy,
Grasped her limbs to her cheek, and her mouth
Caressed the blonde gold within the grey shadows:
And during all that time the younger counted
On her darling fingers the promised waltzes,
And, blushing, smiled innocently.
--translated by Francois Pirous

Parsifal

Parsifal has overcome the gently babbling daughters
Who'd distract him to desire; despite fleshly delight
That might lure the virgin youth, the temptation
To love their swelling breasts and gentle babble;
He has vanquished fair Womankind, of subtle heart,
Her tender arms outstretched and her throat pale;
From harrowing Hell, he now returns triumphant,
Bearing a heavy trophy in his boyish hands,
With the spear that pierced the Saviour's side!
He who healed the King shall be himself enthroned,
As priest-king and guardian of the sacred treasure.
In golden robe he worships that sign of grace,
The pure vessel in which shines the Holy Blood. -
And, o those children's voices singing in the dome!

Before Your Light Quite Fail

Before your light quite fail,
Already paling star,
(The quail Sings in the thyme afar!)
Turn on the poet?s eyes
That love makes overrun?
(See rise The lark to meet the sun!)
Your glance, that presently
Must drown in the blue morn;
(What glee Amid the rustling corn!)
Then flash my message true
Down yonder,?far away!?
(The dew Lies sparkling on the hay.)
Across what visions seek
The Dear One slumbering still.
(Quick, quick! The sun has reached the hill!)
-- Translated by Gertrude Hall

Autumn Song

With long sobs the violin-throbs
of autumn wound
my heart with languorous and montonous sound.
Choking and pale When i mind the tale
the hours keep,
my memory strays down
other days and I weep;
and I let me go where ill winds blow
now here, now there,
harried and sped, even as a dead
leaf, anywhere.

"Covering the land..."

Covering the land?
Dismal, endless plain?
Blurring the terrain,
Snow haze gleams like sand.
Bronze the sky, with no Glimmering of light:
Is the moon to grow Dim, and die tonight?
In the woods, close by,
Billows the fog, cloaks
Gray the cloud-like oaks
Floating on the sky. Bronze the sky,
with no Glimmering of light:
Is the moon to grow Dim,
and die tonight?
Scrawny wolves, and you,
Wheezing ravens, when
Winds blow sharp, what then?
What? What can you do?
Covering the land?
Dismal, endless plain?
Blurring the terrain,
Snow haze gleams like sand.
--Translated by Norman R. Shapiro

Claire De Lune

Your soul is the choicest of countries
where charming maskers, masked shepherdesses,
go playing their lutes and dancing, yet gently
sad beneath their fantastic disguises.
While they sing in a minor key
of all-conquering love and careless fortune,
they don?t seem to trust in their own fantasy
and their song melts away in the light of the moon,
in the quiet moonlight, lovely and sad,
that makes the birds dream in the trees, all
the tall water-jets sob with ecstasies,
the slender water-jets rising from marble.

The Sea-Shells

Each shell, encrusted, we see,
in the cave where we achieved love?s goal,
has its own peculiarity.
One has the purple colour of souls,
ours, thief of the blood our heart?s possess
when I burn, and you flame like hot coals.
That one affects your languorousness,
your pallor, your weary form
angered by my mocking eyes? caress:
this one mimics the charm of your ear,
and this I see your rosy neck,
so full and warm:
but one, among all of them, troubled me.

Spring

Tender, the young auburn woman,
By such innocence aroused,
Said to the blonde young girl
These words, in a soft low voice:
'Sap which mounts, and flowers which thrust,
Let my fingers wander in the moss
Where glows the rosebud
'Let me among the clean grasses
Drink the drops of dew
Which sprinkle the tender flower, --
'So that pleasure, my dear,
Should brighten your open brow
Like dawn the reluctant blue.'
Her dear rare body, harmonious,
Fragrant, white as white
Rose, whiteness of pure milk, and rosy
As a lily beneath purple skies?
Beauteous thighs, upright breasts,
The back, the loins and belly, feast
For the eyes and prying hands
And for the lips and all the sense
'Little one, let us see if your bed
Has still beneath the red curtain
The beautiful pillow that slips so
And the wild sheets. O to your bed!'
--translated by Roland Grant and Paul Archer

The Young Fools

High-heels were struggling with a full-length dress
So that, between the wind and the terrain,
At times a shining stocking would be seen,
And gone too soon. We liked that foolishness.
Also, at times a jealous insect's dart
Bothered out beauties.
Suddenly a white
Nape flashed beneath the branches, and this sight
Was a delicate feast for a young fool's heart.
Evening fell, equivocal, dissembling,
The women who hung dreaming on our arms
Spoke in low voices, words that had such charms
That ever since our stunned soul has been trembling.

'Tis The Feast Of Corn

?Tis the feast of corn, 'tis the feast of bread,
On the dear scene returned to, witnessed again!
So white is the light o?er the reapers shed
Their shadows fall pink on the level grain.
The stalked gold drops to the whistling flight
Of the scythes, whose lightning dives deep, leaps clear;
The plain, labor-strewn to the confines of sight,
Changes face at each instant, gay and severe.
All pants, all is effort and toil ?neath the sun,
The stolid old sun, tranquil ripener of wheat,
Who works o?er our haste imperturbably on
To swell the green grape yon, turning it sweet.
Work on, faithful sun, for the bread and the wine,
Feed man with the milk of the earth, and bestow
The frank glass wherein unconcern laughs divine,?
Ye harvesters, vintagers, work on, aglow!
For from the flour?s fairest, and from the vine?s best,
Fruit of man?s strength spread to earth?s uttermost,
God gathers and reaps, to His purposes blest,
The Flesh and the Blood for the chalice and host!
--Translated by Gertrude Hall

Bruxelles

Hills and fences hurry by
Blent in greenish-rosy flight,
And the yellow carriage-light
Blurs all to the half-shut eye.
Slowly turns the gold to red
O?er the humble darkening vales;
Little trees that flatly spread,
Where some feeble birdling wails.
Scarcely sad, so mild and fair
This enfolding Autumn seems;
All my moody languor dreams,
Cradled by the gentle air.
--Translated by Gertrude Hall

Melancholy

I am the Empire in the last of its decline,
That sees the tall, fair-haired Barbarians pass,--
the while Composing indolent acrostics,
in a style Of gold,
with languid sunshine dancing in each line.
The solitary soul is heart-sick with a vile Ennui.
Down yon, they say, War's torches bloody shine.
Alas, to be so faint of will, one must resign
The chance of brave adventure in the splendid file,-
Of death, perchance! Alas, so lagging in desire!
Ah, all is drunk! Bathyllus, has done laughing, pray?
Ah, all is drunk,--all eaten!
Nothing more to say!
Alone, a vapid verse one tosses in the fire;
Alone, a somewhat thievish slave neglecting one;
Alone, a vague disgust of all beneath the sun!

Art Poetique

Of music before everything?
And for this like the Odd more?
Vaguer and more melting in air,
Without anything in it
which weighs or arrests.
It must also be that you do not go about
Choosing your words without some carelessness:
Nothing dearer than the greyish song
Where the Wavering and Precise are joined.
Something like beautiful eyes behind veils,
Something like the trembling wide day of noon,
Something like (when made gentle by an autumn sky)
The blue jumble of clear stars!
For we desire Nuance yet more?
Not color, nothing but Nuance!
Oh! only nuance brings
Dream to dream and flute to horn!
Keep away from the murderous Sharp
Saying, Cruel Wit and Impure Laugh,
Which make weep the eyes of Blue Space?
And all that garlic of low cooking.
Take eloquence and wring its neck!
You will do well, in energetic mood,
To use Rhyme made wise somewhat.
If it is not watched, where may it not go?
Oh, who can tell the wrong-doings of Rhyme?
What deaf child or mad black man
Has made for us this penny toy,
That sounds hollow and false heard precisely.
Let music be, more of it and always!
Let your verse be the thing in motion
Which one feels who flees from an altering soul,
Towards other skies to other loves.
Let your verse be the happy occurrence,
Somehow within the restless morning wind,
Which goes about smelling of mint and thyme...
And all the rest is literature.
--Translated by Eli Siegel