Facing the
timorous
nakedness of the gazelle
That trembles, on her back like an elephant gone wild,
Waiting upside down, she keenly admires herself,
Laughing with her bared teeth at the child:
And, between her legs where the victim's couched,
Raising the black flesh split beneath its mane,
Advances the palate of that alien mouth
Pale, rosy as a shell from the Spanish Main.
That trembles, on her back like an elephant gone wild,
Waiting upside down, she keenly admires herself,
Laughing with her bared teeth at the child:
And, between her legs where the victim's couched,
Raising the black flesh split beneath its mane,
Advances the palate of that alien mouth
Pale, rosy as a shell from the Spanish Main.
Mallarme - Poems
.
.
Mysticis umbraculis
Fan
O so dear
Sonnet
Autumn Plaint
Sea Breeze
Index of First Lines
A Toast
Nothing, this foam, virgin verse
Depicting the chalice alone:
Far off a band of Sirens drown
Many of them head first.
We sail, O my various
Friends, I already at the stern,
You at the lavish prow that churns
The lightning's and the winters' flood:
A sweet intoxication urges me
Despite pitching, tossing, fearlessly
To offer this toast while standing
Solitude, reef, and starry veil
To whatever's worthy of knowing
The white anxiety of our sail.
Futile Petition
Princess! In jealousy of a Hebe's fate
Rising over this cup at your lips' kisses,
I spend my fires with the slender rank of prelate
And won't even figure naked on Sevres dishes.
Since I'm not your pampered poodle,
Pastille, rouge or sentimental game
And know your shuttered glance at me too well,
Blonde whose hairdressers have goldsmiths' names!
Name me. . . you whose laughters strawberry-crammed
Are mingling with a flock of docile lambs
Everywhere grazing vows bleating joy the while,
Name me. . . so that Love winged with a fan
Paints me there, lulling the fold, flute in hand,
Princess, name me the shepherd of your smiles.
A Negress
Possessed by some demon now a negress
Would taste a girl-child saddened by strange fruits
Forbidden ones too under the ragged dress,
This glutton's ready to try a trick or two:
To her belly she twins two fortunate tits
And, so high that no hand knows how to seize her,
Thrusts the dark shock of her booted legs
Just like a tongue unskilled in pleasure.
Facing the timorous nakedness of the gazelle
That trembles, on her back like an elephant gone wild,
Waiting upside down, she keenly admires herself,
Laughing with her bared teeth at the child:
And, between her legs where the victim's couched,
Raising the black flesh split beneath its mane,
Advances the palate of that alien mouth
Pale, rosy as a shell from the Spanish Main.
Distress
I don't come to conquer your flesh tonight, O beast
In whom are the sins of the race, nor to stir
In your foul tresses a mournful tempest
Beneath the fatal boredom my kisses pour:
A heavy sleep without those dreams that creep
Under curtains alien to remorse, I ask of your bed,
Sleep you can savour after your dark deceits,
You who know more of Nothingness than the dead.
For Vice, gnawing this inborn nobleness of mine
Marked me, like you, with its sterility,
But shroud-haunted, pale, destroyed, I flee
While that heart no tooth of any crime
Can wound lives in your breast of stone,
Frightened of dying while I sleep alone.
Summer Sadness
The sun, on the sand, O sleeping wrestler,
Warms a languid bath in the gold of your hair,
Melting the incense on your hostile features,
Mixing an amorous liquid with the tears.
The immutable calm of this white burning,
O my fearful kisses, makes you say, sadly,
'Will we ever be one mummified winding,
Under the ancient sands and palms so happy? '
But your tresses are a tepid river,
Where the soul that haunts us drowns, without a shiver
And finds the Nothingness you cannot know!
I'll taste the unguent of your eyelids' shore,
To see if it can grant to the heart, at your blow,
The insensibility of stones and the azure.
The Clown Chastised
Eyes, lakes of my simple passion to be reborn
Other than as the actor who gestures with his hand
As with a pen, and evokes the foul soot of the lamps,
Here's a window in the walls of cloth I've torn.
With legs and arms a limpid treacherous swimmer
With endless leaps, disowning the sickness
Hamlet! It's as if I began to build in the ocean depths
A thousand tombs: to vanish still virgin there.
Mirthful gold of a cymbal beaten with fists,
The sun all at once strikes the pure nakedness
That breathed itself out of my coolness of nacre,
Rancid night of the skin, when you swept over me,
Not knowing, ungrateful one, that it was, this make-up,
My whole anointing, drowned in ice-water perfidy.
The Poem's Gift
I bring you the child of an Idumean night!
Black, with pale naked bleeding wings, Light
Through the glass, burnished with gold and spice,
Through panes, still dismal, alas, and cold as ice,
Hurled itself, daybreak, against the angelic lamp.
Palm-leaves! And when it showed this relic, damp,
To that father attempting an inimical smile,
The solitude shuddered, azure, sterile.
O lullaby, with your daughter, and the innocence
Of your cold feet, greet a terrible new being:
A voice where harpsichords and viols linger,
Will you press that breast, with your withered finger,
From which Woman flows in Sibylline whiteness to
Those lips starved by the air's virgin blue?
Fan
O so dear
Sonnet
Autumn Plaint
Sea Breeze
Index of First Lines
A Toast
Nothing, this foam, virgin verse
Depicting the chalice alone:
Far off a band of Sirens drown
Many of them head first.
We sail, O my various
Friends, I already at the stern,
You at the lavish prow that churns
The lightning's and the winters' flood:
A sweet intoxication urges me
Despite pitching, tossing, fearlessly
To offer this toast while standing
Solitude, reef, and starry veil
To whatever's worthy of knowing
The white anxiety of our sail.
Futile Petition
Princess! In jealousy of a Hebe's fate
Rising over this cup at your lips' kisses,
I spend my fires with the slender rank of prelate
And won't even figure naked on Sevres dishes.
Since I'm not your pampered poodle,
Pastille, rouge or sentimental game
And know your shuttered glance at me too well,
Blonde whose hairdressers have goldsmiths' names!
Name me. . . you whose laughters strawberry-crammed
Are mingling with a flock of docile lambs
Everywhere grazing vows bleating joy the while,
Name me. . . so that Love winged with a fan
Paints me there, lulling the fold, flute in hand,
Princess, name me the shepherd of your smiles.
A Negress
Possessed by some demon now a negress
Would taste a girl-child saddened by strange fruits
Forbidden ones too under the ragged dress,
This glutton's ready to try a trick or two:
To her belly she twins two fortunate tits
And, so high that no hand knows how to seize her,
Thrusts the dark shock of her booted legs
Just like a tongue unskilled in pleasure.
Facing the timorous nakedness of the gazelle
That trembles, on her back like an elephant gone wild,
Waiting upside down, she keenly admires herself,
Laughing with her bared teeth at the child:
And, between her legs where the victim's couched,
Raising the black flesh split beneath its mane,
Advances the palate of that alien mouth
Pale, rosy as a shell from the Spanish Main.
Distress
I don't come to conquer your flesh tonight, O beast
In whom are the sins of the race, nor to stir
In your foul tresses a mournful tempest
Beneath the fatal boredom my kisses pour:
A heavy sleep without those dreams that creep
Under curtains alien to remorse, I ask of your bed,
Sleep you can savour after your dark deceits,
You who know more of Nothingness than the dead.
For Vice, gnawing this inborn nobleness of mine
Marked me, like you, with its sterility,
But shroud-haunted, pale, destroyed, I flee
While that heart no tooth of any crime
Can wound lives in your breast of stone,
Frightened of dying while I sleep alone.
Summer Sadness
The sun, on the sand, O sleeping wrestler,
Warms a languid bath in the gold of your hair,
Melting the incense on your hostile features,
Mixing an amorous liquid with the tears.
The immutable calm of this white burning,
O my fearful kisses, makes you say, sadly,
'Will we ever be one mummified winding,
Under the ancient sands and palms so happy? '
But your tresses are a tepid river,
Where the soul that haunts us drowns, without a shiver
And finds the Nothingness you cannot know!
I'll taste the unguent of your eyelids' shore,
To see if it can grant to the heart, at your blow,
The insensibility of stones and the azure.
The Clown Chastised
Eyes, lakes of my simple passion to be reborn
Other than as the actor who gestures with his hand
As with a pen, and evokes the foul soot of the lamps,
Here's a window in the walls of cloth I've torn.
With legs and arms a limpid treacherous swimmer
With endless leaps, disowning the sickness
Hamlet! It's as if I began to build in the ocean depths
A thousand tombs: to vanish still virgin there.
Mirthful gold of a cymbal beaten with fists,
The sun all at once strikes the pure nakedness
That breathed itself out of my coolness of nacre,
Rancid night of the skin, when you swept over me,
Not knowing, ungrateful one, that it was, this make-up,
My whole anointing, drowned in ice-water perfidy.
The Poem's Gift
I bring you the child of an Idumean night!
Black, with pale naked bleeding wings, Light
Through the glass, burnished with gold and spice,
Through panes, still dismal, alas, and cold as ice,
Hurled itself, daybreak, against the angelic lamp.
Palm-leaves! And when it showed this relic, damp,
To that father attempting an inimical smile,
The solitude shuddered, azure, sterile.
O lullaby, with your daughter, and the innocence
Of your cold feet, greet a terrible new being:
A voice where harpsichords and viols linger,
Will you press that breast, with your withered finger,
From which Woman flows in Sibylline whiteness to
Those lips starved by the air's virgin blue?
