No More Learning

. '

Inert, all things burn in the tawny hour

Not seeing by what art there fled away together

Too much of hymen desired by one who seeks there

The natural A: then I'll wake to the primal fever

Erect, alone, beneath the ancient flood, light's power,

Lily! And the one among you all for artlessness.

Other than this sweet nothing shown by their lip, the kiss

That softly gives assurance of treachery,

My breast, virgin of proof, reveals the mystery

Of the bite from some illustrious tooth planted;

Let that go! Such the arcane chose for confidant,

The great twin reed we play under the azure ceiling,

That turning towards itself the cheek's quivering,

Dreams, in a long solo, so we might amuse

The beauties round about by false notes that confuse

Between itself and our credulous singing;

And create as far as love can, modulating,

The vanishing, from the common dream of pure flank

Or back followed by my shuttered glances,

Of a sonorous, empty and monotonous line.


Try then, instrument of flights, O malign

Syrinx by the lake where you await me, to flower again!

I, proud of my murmur, intend to speak at length

Of goddesses: and with idolatrous paintings

Remove again from shadow their waists' bindings:

So that when I've sucked the grapes' brightness

To banish a regret done away with by my pretence,

Laughing, I raise the emptied stem to the summer's sky

And breathing into those luminous skins, then I,

Desiring drunkenness, gaze through them till evening.

O nymphs, let's rise again with many memories.

'My eye, piercing the reeds, speared each immortal

Neck that drowns its burning in the water

With a cry of rage towards the forest sky;

And the splendid bath of hair slipped by

In brightness and shuddering, O jewels!

I rush there: when, at my feet, entwine (bruised

By the languor tasted in their being-two's evil)

Girls sleeping in each other's arms' sole peril:

I seize them without untangling them and run

To this bank of roses wasting in the sun

All perfume, hated by the frivolous shade

Where our frolic should be like a vanished day. '

I adore you, wrath of virgins, O shy

Delight of the nude sacred burden that glides

Away to flee my fiery lip, drinking

The secret terrors of the flesh like quivering

Lightning: from the feet of the heartless one

To the heart of the timid, in a moment abandoned

By innocence wet with wild tears or less sad vapours.

'Happy at conquering these treacherous fears

My crime's to have parted the dishevelled tangle

Of kisses that the gods kept so well mingled:

For I'd scarcely begun to hide an ardent laugh

In one girl's happy depths (holding back

With only a finger, so that her feathery candour

Might be tinted by the passion of her burning sister,

The little one, naive and not even blushing)

Than from my arms, undone by vague dying,

This prey, forever ungrateful, frees itself and is gone,

Not pitying the sob with which I was still drunk. '

No matter! Others will lead me towards happiness

By the horns on my brow knotted with many a tress:

You know, my passion, how ripe and purple already

Every pomegranate bursts, murmuring with the bees:

And our blood, enamoured of what will seize it,

Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire yet.

At the hour when this wood with gold and ashes heaves

A feast's excited among the extinguished leaves:

Etna!
It's on your slopes, visited by Venus

Setting in your lava her heels so artless,

When a sad slumber thunders where the flame burns low.

I hold the queen!

O certain punishment. . .

No, but the soul

Void of words, and this heavy body,

Succumb to noon's proud silence slowly:

With no more ado, forgetting blasphemy, I

Must sleep, lying on the thirsty sand, and as I

Love, open my mouth to wine's true constellation!

Farewell to you, both: I go to see the shadow you have become.

Funeral Libation (At Gautier's Tomb)

To you, gone emblem of our happiness!

Greetings, in pale libation and madness,

Don't think to some hope of magic corridors I offer

My empty cup, where a monster of gold suffers!

Your apparition cannot satisfy me:

Since I myself entombed you in porphyry.

The rite decrees our hands must quench the torch

Against the iron mass of your tomb's porch:

None at this simple ceremony should forget,

Those chosen to sing the absence of the poet,

That this monument encloses him entire.

Were it not that his art's glory, full of fire

Till the dark communal moment all of ash,

Returns as proud evening's glow lights the glass,

To the fires of the pure mortal sun!

Marvellous, total, solitary, so that one

Trembles to breathe with man's false pride.

This haggard crowd! 'We are', it cries,

'Our future ghosts, their sad opacity. '

But with walls blazoned, mourning, empty,

I've scorned the lucid horror of a tear,

When, deaf to the sacred verse he does not fear,

One of those passers-by, mute, blind, proud,

Transmutes himself, a guest in his vague shroud,

Into the virgin hero of posthumous waiting.