3DXO�9HUODLQH

7ZHQW\�7KUHH�3RHPV$�6�.OLQH� ¤¤ �����$OO�5LJKWV�5HVHUYHG

This work may be freely reproduced, stored and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any NON-

COMMERCIAL purpose.

2

&RQWHQWVNevermore ............................................................... 4Wish......................................................................... 5Lassitude .................................................................. 6My Familiar Dream ................................................. 7Woman And Cat ...................................................... 8Song Of The Artless Ones ....................................... 9Claire De Lune....................................................... 11The Innocents......................................................... 12The Sea-Shells ....................................................... 13Cythera................................................................... 14To Clymène ........................................................... 15Sentimental Conversation ...................................... 17In Her Dress…. ...................................................... 18The Moon, White…............................................... 19It Rains In My Heart… .......................................... 21You See We Need….............................................. 22Oh Sad, Sad… ....................................................... 23I Still See You….................................................... 25Green ..................................................................... 26Spleen .................................................................... 27Streets .................................................................... 28Sadness, The Bodily Weariness… ......................... 30Circumspection ...................................................... 31

3

Index of First Lines................................................ 32

4

1HYHUPRUH(3RqPHV�6DWXUQLHQV��0pODQFKROLD�,,)

Memory, memory, what do you want of me? Autumnmakes the thrush fly through colourless air,and the sun casts a monotonous glareon the yellowing woods where the north winds hum.

We were alone, and walking in dream,she and I, hair and thoughts wind-blown.Suddenly, turning her troubling gaze on me,‘Your loveliest day?’ her voice of living gold,

her voice, with its fresh angelic tone, vibrant and sweet.I gave her my answer, a smile so discreet,and kissed her white hand with devotion.

- Ah! The first flowers, what a fragrance they have!And how charming the murmured emotionof that first ‘yes’ from lips that we love!

5

:LVK(3RqPHV�6DWXUQLHQV��0pODQFKROLD�,9)

Ah! Fond speech! And the first mistresses!The hair’s gold, the eyes’ blue, the flower of the flesh,and, then, in the scent of the dear body’s meshthe shy spontaneity of caresses!

How far away is all of that lightnessand all that innocence! Ah, backwards yetto the Spring of regret, the black winters have fled,my disgusts, my boredoms, and my distress.

So I’m alone now, here, sad and alone,sad and desperate, chilled like the old,poor as an orphan with no elder sister.

O for a woman in love, tender and mild,sweet, pensive, dark, and always astonished,who now and then kisses your brow like a child.

6

/DVVLWXGH(3RqPHV�6DWXUQLHQV��0pODQFKROLD�9)

‘)RU�WKH�ZDUV�RI�ORYH�D�ILHOG�RI�IHDWKHUV¶Gongora

With sweetness, with sweetness, with sweetness!Calm this feverish rapture a little, my charmer.Even at its height, you see, sometimes a loverneeds the quiet forgetfulness of a sister.

Be languid: make your caresses sleep-bringers,like your cradling gaze and your sighs.Ah, the jealous embrace, the obsessive spasm,aren’t worth a deep kiss, even one that lies!

But you say to me child, in your dear heart of goldwild desire goes sounding her cry.Let her trumpet away, she’s too bold!

Put your brow on my brow, your hand on my hand,make me those promises you’ll break by and by,let’s weep till the dawn, my little firebrand!

7

0\�)DPLOLDU�'UHDP(3RqPHV�6DWXUQLHQV��0pODQFKROLD�9,)

I often have this dream, strange and penetratingof a woman, unknown, whom I love, who loves me,and who’s never, each time, the same exactly,nor exactly different, she knows me, she’s loving.

Oh she knows me, and my heart, growingclear for her alone, is no longer a problem,for her alone, she alone understands, then,how to cool the sweat of my brow with her weeping.

Is she dark, blonde, or auburn? – I’ve no idea.Her name? I remember it’s vibrant and dear,as those of the loved that life has exiled.

Her eyes are the same as a statue’s eyes,and in her voice, distant, serious, mild,the tone of dear voices, of those who have died.

8

:RPDQ�$QG�&DW(3RqPHV�6DWXUQLHQV��&DSULFHV�,)

She was playing with her cat:it was lovely to seethe white hand and white pawfight, in shadows of eve.

She hid – little wicked one –in black silk mittensclaws of murderous agate,fierce and bright as kittens’.

The other too was full of sweetness,sheathing her sharp talons’ caress,though the devil lacked nothing there.

And in the bedroom, where sonorousethereal laughter tinkled in air,shone IRXU points of phosphorus.

9

6RQJ�2I�7KH�$UWOHVV�2QHV(3RqPHV�6DWXUQLHQV��&DSULFHV�,,,)

We are the artless ones,hair braided, eyes blue,we who live almost hidden from viewin novels barely read.

We walk, arms interlaced,and the day’s not so pureas the depths of our thoughts,and our dreams are azure.

And we run through the fieldsand we laugh and we chatter,from dawn to evening,we chase butterflies’ shadows:

and shepherdesses’ bonnetsprotect our freshnessand our dresses – so thin –are of perfect whiteness.

10

The Don Juans, the Lotharios,the Knights all eyes,pay their respects to us,their ‘alases’ and sighs:

in vain though, their grimaces:they bruise their noses,on ironic pleatsof our vanishing dresses:

and our innocence stillmocks the fantasiesof those tilters at windmillsthough sometimes we feel

our hearts beat fiercelywith clandestine dreams,knowing we’ll be thelovers of libertines.

11

&ODLUH�'H�/XQH()rWHV�*DODQWV)

Your soul is the choicest of countrieswhere charming maskers, masked shepherdesses,go playing their lutes and dancing, yet gentlysad beneath their fantastic disguises.

While they sing in a minor keyof all-conquering love and careless fortune,they don’t seem to trust in their own fantasyand 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, allthe tall water-jets sob with ecstasies,the slender water-jets rising from marble.

12

7KH�,QQRFHQWV()rWHV�*DODQWV)

High heels fought with their long dresses,so that, a question of slopes and breezes,ankles sometimes glimmered to please us,ah, intercepted! – Those dear foolishnesses!

Sometimes a jealous insect’s stingtroubled necks of beauties under the branches,white napes revealed in sudden flashesa feast for our young eyes’ wild gazing.

Evening fell, ambiguous autumn evening:the beauties, dreamers who leaned on our arms,whispered soft words, so deceptive, such charms,that our souls were left quivering and singing.

13

7KH�6HD�6KHOOV()rWHV�*DODQWV)

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 possesswhen I burn, and you flame like hot coals.

That one affects your languorousness,your pallor, your weary formangered by my mocking eyes’ caress:

this one mimics the charmof your ear, and this I seeyour rosy neck, so full and warm:

but one, among all of them, troubled me.

14

&\WKHUD()rWHV�*DODQWV)

A summer-house’s latticessweetly cover our caress,joy the roses cool, our friends:

perfume of roses, faint and sweet,blowing on the summer breeze,with her own fragrance blends:

as the promise her eyes gaveher courage is complete, and herlips yield an exquisite fever:

and Love fulfilling all things saveAppetite, jams and sorbets hereprotect us from the ache of hunger.

15

7R�&O\PqQH()rWHV�*DODQWV)

Mystical singing-birds,romances without words,dear, because your eyesthe shade of skies,

because your voice, strangevision that will derange,troubling the horizonof my reason,

because the rare perfumeof your swanlike paleness,because the innocenceof your fragrance,

ah, because all your being,music so piercing,clouds of lost angels,tones and scents,

16

has by soft cadenceswith its correspondences,lured my subtle heart, ohlet it be so!

17

6HQWLPHQWDO�&RQYHUVDWLRQ()rWHV�*DODQWV)

In the old lonely park’s frozen glasstwo dark shadows lately passed.

Their lips were slack, their eyes were blurred,the words they spoke were scarcely heard.

In the old lonely park’s frozen glasstwo spectral forms invoked the past.

‘Do you remember our former ecstasies?’‘Why would you have me rake up memories?’

‘Does your heart still beat at my name alone?’‘Is it always my soul you see in dream?’ – ‘Ah, no’.

‘Oh the lovely days of unspeakable mystery,when our mouths met!’ – ‘Ah yes, maybe.’

‘How blue it was, the sky, how high our hopes!’‘Hope fled, conquered, along the dark slopes.’

So they walked there, among the wild herbs,and the night alone listened to their words.

18

,Q�+HU�'UHVV«�(/D�%RQQH�&KDQVRQ��,,,)

In her dress of grey-green frills,one day in June, I was feeling anxious,she appeared, smiling at my glances,the one I admired without fear of ill.

She came, went, returned, spoke, and sat,serious, light, ironic, tender,and I felt, deep in my soul, so sombre,like some joyous image of all that:

her voice, its subtle music’s tone,delightfully accompanyingthe artless wit of sweet chatteringwhere a kind heart’s joy was shown.

I was as quickly, once the semblanceof my rebellion was over, whollyin the power of that little fairy,as since I’ve beseeched to be, trembling.

19

7KH�0RRQ��:KLWH«(/D�%RQQH�&KDQVRQ��9,)

The moon, white,shines in the trees:from each brightbranch a voice fleesunder the leaves that move,

O well-beloved.

The pools reflecta mirror’s depth,the silhouetteof willows’ wetblack where the wind weeps…

let us dream, time sleeps.

It seems a vast, soothing,tender balmis fallingfrom heaven’s calmempurpled by a star…

it’s the exquisite hour.

20

7KH�1RLVH�)URP�%DUV«�(/D�%RQQH�&KDQVRQ��;9,)

The noise from bars, the pavement’s mire,ruined sycamores leafing black air:the bus, a typhoon of mud and metal,bouncing, between wheels, with its rattle,rolling its red and green eyes slowly,workers off to the club, pipes smoking,under the noses of policemen, those drones,roofs dripping, walls sweating, slippery stones,broken asphalt, gutters where sewers blend,behold, my road – with paradise at the end.

21

,W�5DLQV�,Q�0\�+HDUW«(5RPDQFHV�6DQV�3DUROHV��$UULHWWHV�2XEOLpHV�,)

‘,W�UDLQV�VRIWO\�RQ�WKH�WRZQ.’5LPEDXGIt rains in my heartas it rains on the town,what is this artthat soaks to my heart?

Oh sweet sound of the rainon the earth and the roofs!For a heart dulled again,oh the song of the rain!

It rains for no reasonin this heart without heart.What? And no treason?A grief without reason?

It’s pain’s darkest statenot to know why,my heart feels such weightwithout love, without hate.

22

<RX�6HH�:H�1HHG«(5RPDQFHV�6DQV�3DUROHV��$UULHWWHV�2XEOLpHV�,9)

You see we need to pardon everything.That’s the way we’ll be happiest,and if our lives have moments that sting,at least we’ll weep together and be blessed.

O, sister-souls as we are, if we could blenda childlike gentleness with vague desiresof travelling far from women and from men,in the strange forgetfulness of what exiles.

Let’s be two children: let’s be two little girlsin love with nothing, amazed by all life brings,pale with fear beneath the leaves’ chaste curlsnot knowing they’ve been forgiven everything.

23

2K�6DG��6DG«(5RPDQFHV�6DQV�3DUROHV��$UULHWWHV�2XEOLpHV�9,,)

Oh sad, sad forever my soulbecause, because of a girl.

How can my hurt be assuagedthough my heart is disengaged?

Though my heart, though my soulare far away from that girl,

how can my heart be assuagedthough my heart is disengaged?

And my over-sensitive heartsays to my soul: by what art

by what art has it come to bethis proud exile, this misery?

My soul says to my heart: do Iknow myself what trapped us or why

we’re with her though we were sent away,although we’re far from her today?

24

25

,�6WLOO�6HH�<RX«(5RPDQFHV�6DQV�3DUROHV��%LUGV�,Q�7KH�1LJKW�9)

I still see you. I opened the door.You lay in bed as if you were weary.But, O light body that love bore,you leapt up naked, crying and happy.

Oh what kisses, what mad embraces!I myself laughed through my tears.Surely those moments will leave their traces,saddest of all and best it appears.

I don’t want to see your smile, or worseyour kind eyes, for that reason,or you, in short, who one must curse,exquisite snare: only the ghost of that season.

26

*UHHQ(5RPDQFHV�6DQV�3DUROHV� $TXDUHOOHV)

Here are the fruits, the flowers, the leaves, the wands,here’s my heart that only beats for your sighs.Don’t shatter them with your snow-white hands,let my poor gifts be pleasing to your eyes.

I reach you, still covered with the dew, you see,that the dawn wind froze here on my face.Let my weariness lie down at your feet,and dream of the dear moments that grant release.

Let my head loll on your young breastringing with your last kisses, yesallow this passing of the great tempest,and let me sleep a little while you rest.

27

6SOHHQ(5RPDQFHV�6DQV�3DUROHV)

The roses were all redand the ivy was all black.

Dear, at a turn of your headmy despair flooded back.

The sky is too blue, too tender,the sea too green, the air too soft.

I always fear – it must be rememberedsome atrocious act of yours.

I’m tired of holly with varnished leavesand shivering boxwood too,

and the countryside’s infinityand everything, except you!

28

6WUHHWV(5RPDQFHV�6DQV�3DUROHV)

Let’s dance a jig!

I loved above all her pretty eyesbrighter than the stars in the skies,I loved her malicious eyes likewise.

Let’s dance a jig!

She for sure, she knew the artof breaking a poor lover’s heart,how charmingly she played the part.

Let’s dance a jig!

But I find that it’s even betterthat kiss of her mouth in flowernow, in my heart, she’s a dead letter.

Let’s dance a jig!

29

I recall, oh I recallthe hours, the words we let fall,and this is the very best of all.

Let’s dance a jig!

30

6DGQHVV��7KH %RGLO\�:HDULQHVV«(6DJHVVH��;)

Sadness, the bodily weariness of man,have moved me, swayed me, made me pity.Ah, most when dark slumbers take me,when sheets stripe the skin, oppress the hand.

And how weak in tomorrow’s feverstill warm from the bath that witherslike a bird on a rooftop that shivers!And feet, in pain from the road forever,

and the chest, bruised by a double-blow,and the mouth, still a bleeding wound,and the trembling flesh, a fragile mound,

and the eyes, poor eyes, so lovely that sohint at the sorrow of seeing the end!…Sad body! So frail, so tormented a friend!

31

&LUFXPVSHFWLRQ(-DGLV�(W�1DJXqUH)

Give me your hand, still your breath, let’s restunder this great tree where the breeze diesbeneath grey branches, in broken sighs,that the soft, tender moonlight caresses.

Motionless, and lowering our eyes,not thinking, dreaming. Let love that tireshave its moment, and happiness that expires,our hair brushed by the owl as it flies.

Let’s forget to hope. Discreet, content,so the soul of each of us stays intenton this calm, this quiet death of the sun.

We rest, silent, in a peaceful nocturne:it’s wrong to disturb his sleep, this one,Nature, the god, fierce and taciturn.

32

,QGH[�RI�)LUVW�/LQHVMemory, memory, what do you want of me? Autumn .................................................................... 4Ah! Fond speech! And the first mistresses! ............. 5With sweetness, with sweetness, with sweetness! ... 6I often have this dream, strange and penetrating...... 7She was playing with her cat: .................................. 8We are the artless ones,............................................ 9Your soul is the choicest of countries .................... 11High heels fought with their long dresses, ............. 12Each shell, encrusted, we see ................................. 13A summer-house’s lattices..................................... 14Mystical singing-birds, .......................................... 15In the old lonely park’s frozen glass ...................... 17In her dress of grey-green frills,............................. 18The moon, white, ................................................... 19The noise from bars, the pavement’s mire, ............ 20It rains in my heart ................................................. 21You see we need to pardon everything. ................. 22Oh sad, sad forever my soul................................... 23I still see you. I opened the door. ........................... 25Here are the fruits, the flowers, the leaves, the wands, .................................................................... 26Let’s dance a jig! ................................................... 28Sadness, the bodily weariness of man,................... 30

33

Give me your hand, still your breath, let’s rest ...... 31