No More Learning

(Alcools: Le Pont Mirabeau)

Under the Mirabeau flows the Seine

And our amours

Shall I remember it again

Joy always followed after Pain

Comes the night sounds the hour

The days go by I endure

Hand in hand rest face to face

While underneath

The bridge of our arms there races

So weary a wave of eternal gazes

Comes the night sounds the hour

The days go by I endure

Love vanishes like the water's flow

Love vanishes

How life is slow

And how Hope lives blow by blow

Comes the night sounds the hour

The days go by I endure

Let the hour pass the day the same

Time past returns

Nor love again

Under the Mirabeau flows the Seine

Comes the night sounds the hour

The days go by I endure

Twilight

(Alcools: Crepuscule)

Brushed by the shadows of the dead

On the grass where day expires

Columbine strips bare admires

her body in the pond instead

A charlatan of twilight formed

Boasts of the tricks to be performed

The sky without a stain unmarred

Is studded with the milk-white stars

From the boards pale Harlequin

First salutes the spectators

Sorcerers from Bohemia

Fairies sundry enchanters

Having unhooked a star

He proffers it with outstretched hand

While with his feet a hanging man

Sounds the cymbals bar by bar

The blind man rocks a pretty child

The doe with all her fauns slips by

The dwarf observes with saddened pose

How Harlequin magically grows

Clotilde

(Alcools: Clotilde)

The anemone and flower that weeps

have grown in the garden plain

where Melancholy sleeps

between Amor and Disdain

There our shadows linger too

that the midnight will disperse

the sun that makes them dark to view

will with them in dark immerse

The deities of living dew

Let their hair flow down entire

It must be that you pursue

That lovely shadow you desire

The White Snow

(Alcools: La blanche neige)

The angels the angels in the sky

One's dressed as an officer

One's dressed as a chef today

And the others sing

Fine sky-coloured officer

Sweet Spring when Christmas is long gone

Will deck you with a lovely sun

A lovely sun

The chef plucks geese

Ah! Snowfalls hiss

Fall and how I miss

My beloved in my arms

The Farewell

(Alcools: L'Adieu)

I've gathered this sprig of heather

Autumn is dead you will remember

On earth we'll see no more of each other

Fragrance of time sprig of heather

Remember I wait for you forever

Acrobats

(Alcools:Saltimbanques)

The strollers in the plain

walk the length of gardens

before the doors of grey inns

through villages without churches

And the children gone before

The others follow dreaming

Each fruit tree resigns itself

When they signal from afar

They have burdens round or square

drums and golden tambourines

Apes and bears wise animals

gather coins as they progress

The Bells

(Alcools: Les Cloches)

My gipsy beau my lover

Hear the bells above us

We loved passionately

Thinking none could see us

But we so badly hidden

All the bells in their song

Saw from heights of heaven

And told it everyone

Tomorrow Cyprien Henry

Marie Ursule Catherine

The baker's wife her husband

and Gertrude that's my cousin

Will smile when I go by them

I won't know where to hide

You far and I'll be crying

Perhaps I shall be dying

The Gypsy

(Alcools: La tzigane)

The gypsy knew in advance

Our two lives star-crossed by night

We said farewell to her and then

from that deep well Hope began

Love heavy a performing bear

Danced upright when we wanted

And the blue bird lost his plumes

And the beggars lost their Ave

We knew quite well that we were damned

But hope of love in the street

Made us think hand in hand

Of what the Gypsy did foresee

The Sign

(Alcools: Signe)

I am bound to the King of the Sign of Autumn

Parting I love the fruits I detest the flowers

I regret every one of the kisses that I've given

Such a bitter walnut tells his grief to the showers

My Autumn eternal O my spiritual season

The hands of lost lovers juggle with your sun

A spouse follows me it's my fatal shadow

The doves take flight this evening their last one

One Evening

(Alcools: Un soir)

An eagle descends from this sky white with archangels

And you sustain me

Let them tremble a long while all these lamps

Pray pray for me

The city's metallic and it's the only star

Drowned in your blue eyes

When the tramways run spurting pale fire

Over the twittering birds

And all that trembles in your eyes of my dreams

That a lonely man drinks

Under flames of gas red like a false dawn

O clothed your arm is lifted

See the speaker stick his tongue out at the listeners

A phantom has committed suicide

The apostle of the fig-tree hangs and slowly rots

Let us play this love out then to the end

Bells with clear chimes announce your birth

See

The streets are garlanded and the palms advance

Towards thee

Moonlight

(Alcools: Clair de Lune)

Mellifluent moon on the lips of the maddened

The orchards and towns are greedy tonight

The stars appear like the image of bees

Of this luminous honey that offends the vines

For now all sweet in their fall from the sky

Each ray of moonlight's a ray of honey

Now hid I conceive the sweetest adventure

I fear stings of fire from this Polar bee

that sets these deceptive rays in my hands

And takes its moon-honey to the rose of the winds

Autumn Ill

(Alcools: Automne malade)

Autumn ill and adored

You die when the hurricane blows in the roseries

When it has snowed

In the orchard trees

Poor autumn

Dead in whiteness and riches

Of snow and ripe fruits

Deep in the sky

The sparrow hawks cry

Over the sprites with green hair the dwarfs

Who've never been loved

In the far tree-lines

the stags are groaning

And how I love O season how I love your rumbling

The falling fruits that no one gathers

The wind the forest that are tumbling

All their tears in autumn leaf by leaf

The leaves

You press

A crowd

That flows

The life

That goes

Hotels

(Alcools: Hotels)

The room is free

Each for himself

A new arrival

Pays by the month

The boss is doubtful

Whether you'll pay

Like a top

I spin on the way

The traffic noise

My neighbour gross

Who puffs an acrid

English smoke

O La Valliere

Who limps and smiles

In my prayers

The bedside table

And all the company

in this hotel

know the languages

of Babel

Let's shut our doors

With a double lock

And each adore

his lonely love

Hunting Horns

(Alcools: Cors de chasse)

Our story's noble as its tragic

like the grimace of a tyrant

no drama's chance or magic

no detail that's indifferent

makes our great love pathetic

And Thomas de Quincey drinking

Opiate poison sweet and chaste

Of his poor Anne went dreaming

We pass we pass since all must pass

Often I'll be returning

Memories are hunting horns alas

whose note along the wind is dying

Vitam Impendere Amori

(Vitam Impendere Amori: To Threaten Life for Love)

Love is dead within your arms

Do you remember his encounter

He's dead you restore the charms

He returns at your encounter

Another spring of springs gone past

I think of all its tenderness

Farewell season done at last

You'll return as tenderly

? ? ? ?

In the evening light that's faded

Where our several loves brush by

Your memory lies enchained

Far from our shades that die

O hands bound by memory

Burning like a funeral pyre

Where the last black Phoenix

Perfection comes to respire

Link by link the chain wears thin

Deriding us your memory

Flies ah hear it you who rail

I kneel again at your feet

? ? ? ?

You've not surprised my secret yet

Already the cortege moves on

But left to us is the regret

of there being no connivance none

The rose floats at the water's edge

The maskers have passed by in crowds

It trembles in me like a bell

This heavy secret you ask now

? ? ? ?

Evening falls and in the garden

Women tell their histories

to Night that not without disdain

spills their dark hair's mysteries

Little children little children

Your wings have flown away

But you rose that defend yourself

Throw your unrivalled scents away

For now's the hour of petty theft

Of plumes of flowers and of tresses

Gather the fountain jets so free

Of whom the roses are mistresses

? ?
You've not surprised my secret yet

Already the cortege moves on

But left to us is the regret

of there being no connivance none

The rose floats at the water's edge

The maskers have passed by in crowds

It trembles in me like a bell

This heavy secret you ask now

? ? ? ?

Evening falls and in the garden

Women tell their histories

to Night that not without disdain

spills their dark hair's mysteries

Little children little children

Your wings have flown away

But you rose that defend yourself

Throw your unrivalled scents away

For now's the hour of petty theft

Of plumes of flowers and of tresses

Gather the fountain jets so free

Of whom the roses are mistresses

? ? ? ?

You descended through the water clear

I drowned my self so in your glance

The soldier passes she leans down

Turns and breaks away a branch

You float on nocturnal waves

The flame is my own heart reversed

Coloured as that comb's tortoiseshell

The wave that bathes you mirrors well

? ? ? ?

O my abandoned youth is dead

Like a garland faded

Here the season comes again

Of suspicion and disdain

The landscape's formed of canvasses

A false stream of blood flows down

And under the tree the stars glow fresh

The only passer by's a clown

The glass in the frame has cracked

An air defined uncertainly

Hovers between sound and thought

Between 'to be' and memory

O my abandoned youth is dead

Like a garland faded

Here the season comes again

Of suspicion and disdain

The Bestiary: or Orpheus's Procession

(Le Bestiaire ou Cortege d'Orphee)

Orpheus

Orpheus, Making Music for the Animals

'Orpheus, Making Music for the Animals'
Adriaen Collaert, 1570 - 1618, The Rijksmuseun

Admire the vital power

And nobility of line:

It's the voice that the light made us understand here

That Hermes Trismegistus writes of in Pimander.

The Tortoise

Feeling

'Feeling'
Raphael Sadeler (I), 1581, The Rijksmuseun

From magic Thrace, O delerium!

My sure fingers sound the strings.

The creatures pass to the sounds

Of my tortoise, and the songs I sing.