No More Learning

That's all that's left already of our true play,

Where the pure poet's gesture, humble, vast

Must deny the dream, the enemy of his trust:

So that on the morning of his exalted stay,

When ancient death is for him as for Gautier,

The un-opening of sacred eyes, the being-still,

The solid tomb may rise, ornament this hill,

The sepulchre where lies the power to blight,

And miserly silence and the massive night.

The Tomb of Edgar Allan Poe

Such as eternity at last transforms into Himself,

The Poet rouses with two-edged naked sword,

His century terrified at having ignored

Death triumphant in so strange a voice!

They, like a spasm of the Hydra, hearing the angel

Once grant a purer sense to the words of the tribe,

Loudly proclaimed it a magic potion, imbibed

From some tidal brew black, and dishonourable.

If our imagination can carve no bas-relief

From hostile soil and cloud, O grief,

With which to deck Poe's dazzling sepulchre,

Let your granite at least mark a boundary forever,

Calm block fallen here from some dark disaster,

To dark flights of Blasphemy scattered through the future.

The Tomb of Charles Baudelaire

The buried shrine shows at its sewer-mouth's

Sepulchral slobber of mud and rubies

Some abominable statue of Anubis,

The muzzle lit like a ferocious snout

Or as when a dubious wick twists in the new gas,

Wiping out, as we know, the insults suffered

Haggardly lighting an immortal pubis,

Whose flight roosts according to the lamp

What votive leaves, dried in cities without evening

Could bless, as she can, vainly sitting

Against the marble of Baudelaire

Shudderingly absent from the veil that clothes her

She, his Shade, a protective poisonous air

Always to be breathed, although we die of her.

Tomb (Of Verlaine)

Anniversary - January 1897

The black rock enraged that the north wind rolls it on

Will not halt itself, even under pious hands, still

Testing its resemblance to human ill,

As if to bless some fatal cast of bronze.

Here nearly always if the ring-dove coos

This immaterial grief with many a fold of cloud

Crushes the ripe star of tomorrows, whose crowd

Will be silvered by its scintillations. Who

Following the solitary leap

External once of our vagabond - seeks

Verlaine? He's hidden in the grass, Verlaine

Only to catch, naively, not drying with his breath

And without his lip drinking there, at peace again,

A shallow stream that's slandered, and named Death.

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.