Pierrot, qui n'a rien d'un Clitandre,
Vide un flacon sans plus attendre,
Et, pratique, entame un pâté.
Cassandre, au fond de l'avenue,
Verse une larme méconnue
Sur son neveu désherité.
Ce faquin d'Arlequin combine
L'enlèvement de Colombine
Et pirouette quatre fois.
Colombine rêve, surprise
De sentir un cœur dans la brise
Et d'entendre en son cœur des voix.
Votre âme est un paysage choisi
Que vont charmant masques et bergamasques,
Jouant du luth et dansant et quasi
Tristes sous leurs déguisements fantasques.
Tout en chantant sur le mode mineur
L'amour vainqueur et la vie opportune,
Ils n'ont pas l'air de croire à leur bonheur
Et leur chanson se mêle au claire de lune,
Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres
Et sangloter d'extase les jets d'eau,
Les grands jets d'eau sveltes parmi les marbres.
Le bon Pierrot, que la foule contemple,
Ayant fini les noces d'Arlequin,
Suit en songeant le boulevard du Temple.
Une fillette au souple casaquin
En vain l'agace de son œil coquin;
Et cepandant mystérieuse et lisse
Faisant de lui sa plus chère délice,
La blanche Lune aux cornes de taureaux
Jette un regard de son œil en coulisse
A son ami Jean Gaspard Debureau.
La lune s'attristait. Des séraphins en pleurs
Rêvant, l'archet aux doigts, dans le calme des fleurs
Vaporeuses, tiraient de mourantes violes
De blancs sanglots glissant sur l'azur des corolles.
_ C'était le jour béni de ton premier baiser.
Ma songerie aimant à me martyriser2
S'enivrait savamment du parfum de tristesse
Que même sans regret et sans déboire laisse
La cueillaison d'un Rêve au cœur qui l'a cueilli.
J'errais donc, l'œil rivé sur le pavé vielli
Quand avec du soleil aux cheveux, dans la rue
Et dans le soir, tu m'es en riant apparue
Et j'ai cru voir la fée au chapeau de clarté
Qui jadis sur mes beaux sommeils d'enfant gâté
Passait, laissant toujours de ses mains mal fermées
Neiger de blancs bouquets d'étoiles parfumées.
Pierrot, who has nothing of a Clitandre,
empties a flask without any more ado,
and, ever practical, digs into a paté.
Cassandre, at the end of the avenue,
pours a little known tear
over her disinherited nephew.
That rogue of a Harlequin plans
the abduction of Colombine
and pirouettes four times.
Colombine dreams, surprised
to feel a heart in the breeze
and to hear voices in her heart.
Your soul is a choice landscape
where charming masks and bergamasks pass by,
playing the lute and singing and quasi
sad beneath their fantastical disguises.
Even as they sing in the minor mode
of victorious love and timely life,
they do not seem to believe their good fortune
and their song mingles with the moonlight,
with the calm moonlight, sad and beautiful,
which makes the birds in the trees dream
and makes the water fountains sob with ecstasy,
the tall slender water fountains amidst the marble statues.
The good Pierrot, whom the crowd observes,
having finished Harlequin's wedding,
follows the boulevard du Temple in a dream.
A little girl in a supple bodice
teases him, in vain, with her roguish eye;
and meanwhile, mysterious and smooth,
making of him her dearest delicacy,
the pale Moon with the bull's horns
darts a glance with her eye into the wings
to her friend Jean Gaspard Debureau.1
The moon was growing sad. Seraphim in tears,
dreaming, bow in hand, in the calm of the vaporous
flowers were, from dying viols, drawing
pale sobs sliding over the azure of the corollas.
_ It was the blessed day of your first kiss.
My reverie delighting in making a martyr of me
knowingly grew intoxicated with the perfume of sadness
that even without regret and without mischance leaves
the harvesting of a Dream to the heart which picked it.
So I was wandering, my eye fixed on the aging pavement
when with sun in your hair, in the road
and in the evening, laughing, you appeared to me
and I thought I saw the fairy with the hat of brightness
who formerly, on the beautiful nights of sleep of my spoilt youth,
passed, always letting white bouquets of fragrant stars
fall like snow from her barely closed hands.
© translated by Christopher Goldsack
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