Dream of the sweetness
Of going yonder to live together!
To love at leisure,
To love and to die
In a country that resembles you!
The watery suns of these misty
skies,
For my spirit, have the charm,
So mysterious, of your
treacherous eyes,
Shining through their tears.
There, all is only order and
beauty,
Luxuriousness,
Calm and sensuous delight.
See on these canals
The sleeping ships
Whose nature is to roam:
It is to fulfil your least desire
That they come
From the ends of the earth.
The setting suns dress the
fields,
The canals, the whole town
In hyacinth and gold;
The world falls asleep in a warm
light!
There, all is only order and
beauty,
Luxuriousness,
Calm and sensuous delight.
Le
Jardin Clos
1. Exaucement
When you place your faltering head
In your hands of light
May my love come
Like a fulfilment to your prayer.
Then the word expires
On your still-trembling lips,
And softens in a smile of roses
In golden rays;
May your calm and mute soul,
A sleeping fairy in the enclosed garden,
In its sweet accomplished wish
Find joy and repose.
2. Quand tu plunges tes yeux dans mes yeux
When you plunge your eyes into my eyes,
I am all in my eyes.
When your mouth loosens my mouth,
My love is only my mouth.
If you caress my hair,
I exist only in them,
If your hand lightly brushes my breasts,
I rise there like a sudden fire.
Is it I whom you have chosen?
There is my soul, there is my life.
3. La Messagère
April, and it is the break of day.
Your blond sisters who resemble you,
At this moment advance towards you, Dear love.
You keep yourself in a shady
enclosure
Of myrtle and white hawthorn:
The door opens under the
branches:
The way is mysterious.
They slowly, in long gowns,
One by one, hand in hand,
Cross the hazy threshold
Where the night becomes dawn.
She who advances first,
Looks at the shadow,
Discovers you, shouts,
And the flower of her eyes
Opens resplendent, in golden
laughter.
And all to the last sister
trembles,
Your lips touch their lips,
The flash of your mouth
Burst into their hearts.
4. Je me poserai sur ton
coeur
I will lie upon your heart
Like the spring upon the sea,
On the plains of the sterile sea,
Where no flower could grow
In its agile breath,
Except flowers of light.
I will lie upon your heart
Like the bird upon the sea,
While resting its weary wings,
And may the endless rhythm
Of the waves and space soothe.
I will lie upon your heart
Like the bird upon the sea.
5. Dans la nymphée
Although your eyes do not see
her,
Believe in your soul that she is
there,
As long ago, divine and pure.
On this bank rest her hands.
Her head is among these jasmines,
There her feet lightly brush the
branches.
She slumbers in these boughs,
Her lips and her eyes are closed,
And her mouth hardly breathes.
Sometimes at night, in a flash,
She appears, her eyes open,
And the flash is reflected in her
eyes.
A brief blue dazzling flash
Reveals her in her long hair,
She awakens, she rises,
And a dazzling garden is all
illuminated
In the depth of the night,
In the rapid flash of a dream.
6. Dans la pénombre
With what, on this April morning,
So fresh and wrapped in shadow,
Is the beloved child of subtle
heart
So completely engaged?
Pensively, with a slow gesture,
In a long dress, a dress with
train,
On the sun’s white spinning-wheel
Spinning blue wool,
Still smiling at her dream
With the eyes of a bride-to-be,
Through the golden foliage,
Amid the lilies of her thought.
7. Il m’est cher, Amour…
It is dear to me, Love, the
blindfold
That holds my eyelids closed;
It weighs like the sweet burden
Of sun on frail roses.
If I move forward, how strange!
I seem to walk on water;
My feet are more heavy
Where I rest them,
And sink deeply as if in rings.
Who then, has released in the
shadows
The golden burden of my long
hair?
Encircled by a dark embrace,
I dive into waves of fire.
My lips, where my soul sings,
Full of ecstasy and kisses,
Open like a passionate flower
Above a burning river.
8. Inscription sur le sable
All with her dress and her
flowers,
She returned here to dust,
And her soul, carried elsewhere
Was reborn in songs of light.
But a light delicate bond,
In death gently broken,
Encircled her weak temples
With immortal diamonds.
As a symbol of her, in this
place,
Alone, amid the pale sand,
The eternal stones still outline
The image of her face.
1. La Flûte de Pan
For the Day of the Hyacinths,
He has given me a pipe
Made of well-cut reeds,
Bound with white wax,
That is sweet to my lips, like honey.
He teaches me to play,
Sitting on his knee;
But I am a little tremulous.
He plays it after me; so softly
That I scarcely hear it.
We have nothing to say,
so close are we to each other;
But our songs wish to respond,
And in turn our mouths join upon the flute.
It is late;
Here is the song of the green frogs
That begins at nightfall.
My mother will never believe
That I have stayed so long
Looking for my lost girdle.
2. La Chevelure
He told me:
“ Tonight, I dreamed.
I had the tresses of your hair
Around my neck.
I had your hair like a black necklace Around the nape of my
neck
And on my breast.
I caressed it and it was my own;
And we were united forever thus
By the same tresses,
Mouth upon mouth,
Like two laurels
That often have but one root.
And little by little, it seemed to me,
So intermingled were our limbs,
That I became part of you
Or you entered into me like my dream.”
When he had done,
He put his hands gently on my shoulders,
And he looked at me
With so tender a look,
That I lowered my eyes with a shiver.
3. Le Tombeau de Naïades
Along the wood covered with frost,
I walked;
My hair, in front of my mouth,
Flowered with little icicles,
And my sandals were heavy
With muddy, packed snow.
He said to me:
“ What are you looking for?”
I follow the track of the satyr.
His little cloven hooves alternate
Like holes in a white mantle.
He said to me:
“ The satyrs are dead.
The satyrs and the nymphs too.
For thirty years there has not been
So terrible a winter.
The track you see is that of a billy-goat.
But let us stay hear, where their tomb is.”
And with the iron of his hoe
He broke the ice of the spring
Where formerly the naïades had laughed.
He took some big cold pieces of ice,
And lifting them toward the pale
sky,
He looked through them.
Greek Mythological References:
The Day of the Hyacinths: Hyacinthus, son of the King of Laconia,
was beloved of Apollo. Boreas and Zephyrus, wind gods, were jealous, and while
Apollo and Hyacinthus were playing discus, they directed the wind so that
Apollo’s discus hit Hyacinthus on the head and killed him. Where the blood from
the mortal wound fell, a flower sprang and was then named Hyacinth. In memory
of this sad event, Laconia annually celebrated the festival of Hyacinthia: this
began with lamentations and ended with songs of joy in honour of the young
hero.
Pan: a phallic divinity who chased nymphs. He resembled a satyr,
with the legs, horns and beard of a billy-goat. He chased the nymph Syrinx, who
to escape him, begged her father the river god Ladon, to change her into a
reed. Pan consoled himself by cutting some reeds and making a new kind of
flute. He called it a Syrinx.
Naïades: a kind of nymph, water divinities of brooks. They had the
gift of prophecy and guarded the flowers, fields and flocks. They lived in
water or grottoes near springs, and although not immortal, they always remained
young and beautiful, nourished by ambrosia.
Satyrs: elementary spirits of forest and mountains. They were part
goat with cloven hooves and horns. They were the expression of youth and
gentleness. Originally lazy and pleasure-seeking, they acquired grace and
became masters of music and dance. They are often thought of as brothers to the
Nymphs.
Histoires Naturelles
He will certainly
be married today.
It should have been yesterday.
In his gala attire he was ready.
He was only waiting for his
fiancee.
She has not come.
She cannot be long.
Magnificent,
He walks with the demeanour
Of an Indian prince
Bearing about him
The customary rich gifts.
Love enhances
The brilliance of his colours
And his crest trembles like a
lyre.
The fiancée does not come.
He climbs to the top of the roof
And looks towards the sun.
He utters his fiendish cry: Léon!
Léon!
It is thus that he calls his fiancée.
He sees nothing coming
And no one replies.
The fowls who are used to him,
Do not even raise their heads at
all.
They are tired of admiring him.
He descends into the courtyard
again,
So sure of his beauty
That he is incapable of
resentment.
His marriage will take place
tomorrow.
And not knowing what to do
For the rest of the day,
He turns towards the flight of
steps.
He ascends as though
They were the steps of a temple,
With an official tread.
He spreads open his tail,
Heavy with all the eyes
That could not leave it.
Once more he repeats the
ceremony.
2. Le Grillon
This is the hour
When tired of wandering,
The black insect returns from his
walk
And carefully tidies
The disorder of his home.
First he rakes his narrow sandy
paths.
He makes some sawdust
Which he spreads on the threshold
Of his retreat.
He files the roots of this tall
grass
Likely to annoy him.
He rests.
Then he rewinds his tiny watch.
Has he finished? Is it broken?
He rests again for a moment.
He goes inside and shuts the
door.
For a long time
He turns the key in the delicate
lock.
And he listens: not a sound
outside.
But he does not feel safe.
And as though by a little chain
With a creaking pulley,
He lets himself down
In to the depths of the earth.
Nothing more is heard.
In the silent countryside,
The poplars rise like fingers in
the air,
Pointing at the moon.
3. Le Cygne
He glides on the lakes
Like a white sleigh,
From one cloud to another.
For he is hungry only for the
fluffy clouds,
That he sees appearing, moving
And vanishing in the water.
It is one of these that he wants.
He takes aim with his beak,
And suddenly plunges his snowy
neck
Into the water.
Then, like a woman’s arm
Emerging from a sleeve,
He draws it back.
He has caught nothing.
He looks:
The startled clouds have
disappeared.
He is only disillusioned for a
moment,
For the clouds are not slow to
return,
And yonder,
Where the ripples of the water
die away,
There is one reforming.
Softly, on a light cushion of
feathers,
The swan paddles and draws near.
He is exhausted
By fishing for unreal
reflections,
And perhaps he will die
A victim of this illusion,
Before catching a single piece of
cloud.
But what am I saying?
Each time he plunges in,
He burrows in the nourishing mud
And brings out a worm.
He grows as fat as a goose.
4. Le Martin-Pêcheur
Not a bite this evening,
But I had a thrilling experience.
As I held out my fishing rod
A kingfisher came and perched on
it.
We do not have a bird more
dazzling.
He looked like a big blue flower
On the end of a long stalk.
The rod bent under the weight.
I held my breath,
So proud to be mistaken for a
tree
By a kingfisher.
And I am sure
That he did not fly away out of
fear,
But that he believed he was only
passing
From one branch to another.
5. La Pintade
She is the hunchback of my
courtyard.
She thinks of nothing but
fighting
Because of her hump.
The hens say nothing to her:
Suddenly she dashes across
And harasses them.
Then she lowers her head, leans
forward,
And with all the speed of her
skinny feet,
She runs and smites with her hard
beak,
Right in the middle of the
turkey’s tail.
This poser annoys her.
Thus, with her head turned blue
And her wattles lively,
Belligerent, she rages from dawn
to dusk.
She fights for no reason,
Perhaps because she is always
imagining That they are laughing at her figure,
At her bald head, and her low
tail.
And she incessantly utters
Her discordant cry
Which pierces the air like a
needle point.
Sometimes she leaves the
courtyard
And disappears.
She gives the peaceable fowls
A moment’s respite.
But she returns
More turbulent and more peevish.
And in a frenzy,
She sprawls on the ground.
What’s the matter with her then?
The sneaky creature is playing a
trick.
She went to lay her egg
In the open country.
I could look for it if I like.
And she rolls in the dust
Like a hunchback.
Le Bestiare ou Cortège d’Orphée
With his four dromedaries
Don Pedro d’Alfaroubeira
Roamed the world over and admired
it
He did what I would like to do
If I had four dromedaries.
2. La
Chèvre du Thibet
The coat of this goat
And even the one of gold
For which so much trouble was
taken
By Jason
Are worth nothing to the value of
The hair of my beloved.
3. La
Sauterelle
Here is the delicate grasshopper
The food of St John
May my verses be likewise
The feast of superior people.
4. Le
Dauphin
Dolphins you play in the sea
Yet the waves are always bitter
Sometimes my joy bursts forth
But life is still cruel.
5. L’Écrevisse
Uncertainty O! my delights
You and I, we progress
Like crayfish go
Backwards, backwards.
6. La
Carpe
In your fish ponds, in your
pools,
Carp, how long you live.
Is it that death has forgotten
you
Fish of melancholy?
Catalogue
de Fleurs
1. La Violette
The Cyclops violet
Grows wonderfully
Into a beautiful Solferino red.
It is very perfumed,
Early flowering and hardy.
2. Le Bégonia
Begonia
Aurora,
Very
double flower,
Apricot
mixed with coral,
Very
prettily coloured.
Rare and
curious.
3. Les Fritillaires
Fritillaries love sunny
places,
Sheltered from the wind and
spring frosts.
In winter they need
covering.
They are also known as
Plover’s Eggs And Imperial Crowns.
4. Les Jacinthes
Albertine pure white
Lapeyrousse pale purple
King of the Belgians pure
carmine red
King of the Blues dark blue
Miss Malakoff bright yellow
in a posy.
5. Les Crocus
The crocus grows quickly in
pots
Or on damp moss in saucers.
In open ground, alone or
mixed
With other spring flowering
plants,
They make a very pretty
effect.
6. Le Brachycome
Brachycome Iberidifolia Blue
Star,
New variety,
Charming dwarf plant
Covered in blue flowers
Of brightest blue.
7. L’Eremurus
Eremurus Isabelinus,
Guaranteed flowering.
The spike of this
magnificent species Sometimes reaches two metres.
Its flowers are beautifully
coloured
From yellow to pink
And long lasting.
You will receive the prices
in the mail!
Trois Poèmes d’Amour
1. I am but a grain of sand,
Always
constant and loving you
Who drinks,
laughs
And sings to
please his lover.
My dear
beauty,
Love your
fragile lover gently.
He is but a
grain of sand,
Always
constant and loving you.
2. I am bald since birth
Out of propriety.
I no longer trust in my valour.
Why such arrogance
From the fair Hortence?
Very bald since birth,
I am so out of propriety.
3. Your finery is hidden,
O sweet jolly lass.
My lovely, spirited miss
Smokes a cigarette.
Will I make my conquest of her
Completely as I would wish?
Your finery is hidden,
O sweet jolly lass.
Je Te Veux
Refrain: I understand your anguish,
Dear lover
And I surrender
To your
desires,
Make me your mistress.
Throw caution to the wind,
Forget our sorrows.
I long for the precious moment
When we find happiness.
I desire you.
Verse: I have no
regrets
And only one
desire
To live my
whole life by your side,
So very close
to you.
May my heart
be yours
And your lips
be mine.
May your body
be mine
And all my
flesh yours.
Verse: Yes, I see in
your eyes
The divine
promise.
May your
loving heart
Seek my
caress.
Entwined
forever,
Burning in the
same flames,
In dreams of
love,
We will
exchange our two souls.
The copyright of these translations belongs to Helena Kean. Please, if you use them, credit me
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