No More Learning

(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.

Yes, I know that Earth in the depths of this night,

Casts a strange mystery with vast brilliant light

Beneath hideous centuries that darken it the less.

Space, like itself, whether denied or expanded

Revolves in this boredom, vile flames as witness

That a festive star's genius has been enkindled.

Sonnet: 'Le vierge, le vivace. . .
'

The virginal, living and lovely day

Will it fracture for us with a wild wing-blow

This solid lost lake whose frost's haunted below

By the glacier, transparent with flights not made?

A swan from time past remembers it's he

Magnificent yet struggling hopelessly

Through not having sung a liveable country

From the radiant boredom of winter's sterility.

His neck will shake off this whitest agony

Space inflicts on a bird that denies it wholly,

But not earth's horror that entraps his feathers.

Phantom assigned to this place by his brilliance,

The Swan in his exile is rendered motionless,

Swathed uselessly by his cold dream of defiance.

Sonnet: 'Victorieusement fui le suicide. . . '

Victoriously the grand suicide fled

Foaming blood, brand of glory, gold, tempest!

O laughter if only to royally invest

My absent tomb purple, down there, is spread.

What! Not even a fragment of all that brightness

Remains, it is midnight, in the shade that fetes us,

Except, from the head, there's a treasure, presumptuous,

That pours without light its spoiled languidness,

Yours, always such a delight! Yours, yes,

Retaining alone of the vanished sky, this

Trace of childish triumph as you spread each tress,

Gleaming as you show it against the pillows,

Like the helmet of war of a child-empress

From which, to denote you, would pour down roses.

Sonnet: 'Ses purs ongles tres haut. . . '

Her pure nails on high dedicating their onyx,

Anguish, at midnight, supports, a lamp-holder,

Many a twilight dream burnt by the Phoenix

That won't be gathered in some ashes' amphora

On a table, in the empty room: here is no ptyx,

Abolished bauble of sonorous uselessness,

(Since the Master's gone to draw tears from the Styx

With that sole object, vanity of Nothingness).