No More Learning

Prose

Hyperbole! From my memory

Triumphantly can't you

Rise today, like sorcery

From an iron-bound book or two:

Since, through science, I inscribe

The hymn of hearts so spiritual

In my patient work, inside

Atlas, herbal, ritual.

We walked set our face

(We were two, I maintain)

Toward the many charms of place,

Compared them, Sister, to yours again.

The reign of authority's troubled

If, without reason, we say

Of this south that our double

Thoughtlessness has in play

That its site, bed of a hundred irises,

(They know if it truly existed),

Bears no name the golden breath

Of the trumpet of summer cited.

Yes, on an isle the air charges

With sight and not with visions

Every flower showed itself larger

Without entering our discussions.

Such flowers, immense, that every one

Usually had as adornment

A clear contour, a lacuna done

To separate it from the garden.

Glories of long-held desire, Ideas

Were all exalted in me, to see

The Iris family appear

Rising to this new duty,

But the sister sensible and fond

Carried her look no further

Than a smile, and as if to understand

I continue my ancient labour.

Oh! Let the contentious spirit know

At this hour when we are silent

The stalks of multiple lilies grow

Far too tall for our reason

And not as the riverbank weeps

When its tedious game tells lies

Claiming abundance should reach

Into my first surprise

On hearing the whole sky and the map

Behind my steps, without end, bear witness

By the ebbing wave itself that

This country never existed.

The child so taught by the paths,

Resigns her ecstasy

Says the word: Anastasius!

Born for scrolls of eternity,

Before a tomb can laugh

Beneath any sky, her ancestor,

At bearing that name: Pulcheria!

Hidden by the too-high lily-flower.

A Fan

(Of Mademoiselle Mallarme's)

With nothing of language but

A beating in the sky

From so precious a place yet

Future verse will rise.

A low wing the messenger

This fan if it is the one

The same by which behind you there

Some mirror has shone

Limpidly (where will fall

pursued grain by grain

a little invisible dust, all

that can give me pain)

So may it always bless

Your hands free of idleness.

Another Fan

(Of Mademoiselle Mallarme's)

O dreamer, that I may dive

In pure pathless joy, understand,

How by subtle deceits connive

To keep my wing in your hand.
A coolness of twilight takes

Its way to you at each beat

Whose imprisoned flutter makes

The horizon gently retreat.

Vertigo! How space quivers

Like an enormous kiss

That, wild to be born for no one, can neither

Burst out or be soothed like this.

Do you feel the fierce paradise

Like stifled laughter that slips

To the unanimous crease's depths

From the corner of your lips?

The sceptre of shores of rose

Stagnant on golden nights,

Is this white closed flight that shows

Against your bracelet's fiery light.

Album Leaf

All at once, as if in play,

Mademoiselle, she who moots

A wish to hear how it sounds today

The wood of my several flutes

It seems to me that this foray

Tried out here in a country place

Was better when I put them away

To look more closely at your face

Yes this vain whistling I suppress

In so far as I can create

Given my fingers pure distress

It lacks the means to imitate

Your very natural and clear

Childlike laughter that charms the air.

(Note: Written to Mademoiselle Roumanille whom Mallarme knew as a child. )

Note

Not meaningless flurries like

Those that frequent the street

Subject to black hats in flight;

But a dancer shown complete

A whirlwind of muslin or

A furious scattering of spray

Raised by her knee, she for

Whom we live, to blow away

All, beyond her, mundane

Witty, drunken, motionless,

With her tutu, and refrain

From other mark of distress,

Unless a light-hearted draught of air

From her dress fans Whistler there.

Little Air

I

Any solitude

Without a swan or quai

Mirrors its disuse

In the gaze I abdicate

Far from that pride's excess

Too high to enfold

In which many a sky paints itself

With the twilight's gold

But languorously flows beside

Like white linen laid aside

Such fleeting birds as dive

Exultantly at my side

Into the wave made you

Your exultation nude.

II

Unconquerably there must

As my hope hurls itself free

Burst on high and be lost

In silence and in fury

A voice alien to the wood

Or followed by no echo,

The bird one never could

Hear again in this life below.

The wild musician,

The one that in doubt expires

As to whether from his breast or mine

Has spurted the sob more dire

Torn apart may it complete

Find rest on some path beneath!

Sonnet: 'Quand l'ombre menaca. . . '

When the shadow with fatal law menaced me

A certain old dream, sick desire of my spine,

Beneath funereal ceilings afflicted by dying

Folded its indubitable wing there within me.

Luxury, O ebony hall, where to tempt a king

Famous garlands are writhing in death,

You are only pride, shadows' lying breath

For the eyes of a recluse dazed by believing.