Du Thrace magique, ô délire!
Mes doigts sûrs font sonner la lyre.
Les animaux passent aux sons
De ma tortue de mes chansons.
Mes durs rêves formels sauront te chevaucher,3
Mon destin au char d'or sera ton beau cocher
Qui pour rênes tiendra tendus à frénésie,
Mes vers, les parangons de toute poésie.
Les poils de cette chèvre et même
Ceux d'or pour qui prit tant de peine
Jason, ne valent rien aux prix4
Des cheveux dont je suis épris.
Tu t'acharnes sur la beauté.
Et quelles femmes ont été
Victimes de ta cruauté!
Eve, Eurydice, Cléopâtre;5
J'en connais encore trois ou quatre.
Je souhaite dans ma maison:
Une femme ayant sa raison,
Un chat passant parmi les livres,
Des amis en toute saison
Sans lesquels je ne peux pas vivre.
O lion, malheureuse image
Des rois chus lamentablement,
Tu ne nais maintenant qu'en cage
A Hambourg, chez les Allemands.
Ne sois pas lascif et peureux
Comme le lièvre et l'amoureux.
Mais que toujours ton cerveau soit
La hase pleine qui conçoit.
Je connais un autre connain
Que tout vivant je voudrais prendre.
Sa garenne est parmi le thym
Des vallons du pays de Tendre.
Avec ces quatre dromadaires
Don Pedro d'Alfaroubeira6
Courut le monde et l'admira.
Il fit ce que je voudrais faire
Si j'avais quatre dromadaires.
Belles journées, souris du temps,
Vous rongez peu-à-peu ma vie.
Dieu! Je vais avoir vingt-huit ans,
Et mal vécus, à mon envie.
Comme un éléphant son ivoire,
J'ai en bouche un bien précieux.
Pourpre mort!... J'achète ma gloire7
Au prix des mots mélodieux.
Le travail mène à la richesse.
Pauvres poètes, travaillons!
La chenille en peinant sans cesse
Devient le riche papillon.
Nos mouches savent des chansons
Que leur apprirent en Norvège
Les mouches ganiques qui sont8
Les divinités de la neige.
Puces, amis, amantes même,
Qu'ils sont cruels ceux qui nous aiment!
Tout notre sang coule pour eux.
Les bien-aimés sont malheureux.
Voici la fine sauterelle,
La nourriture de Saint Jean.9
Puissent mes vers être comme elle,
Le régal des meilleures gens.
Dauphins, vous jouez dans la mer,
Mais le flot est toujours amer.
Parfois, ma joie éclate-t-elle?
La vie est encore cruelle.
Jetant son encre vers les cieux,
Suçant le sang de ce qu'il aime
Et le trouvant délicieux,
Ce monstre inhumain, c'est moi-même.
Méduses, malheureuses têtes
Aux chevelures violettes.
Vous vous plaisez dans les tempêtes
Et je m'y plais comme vous faites.
Incertitude, ô mes délices
Vous et mois nous nous en allons
Comme s'en vont les écrevisses,
A reculons, à reculons.
Dans vos viviers, dans vos étangs,10
Carpes, que vous vivez longtemps!
Est-ce que la mort vous oublie,
Poissons de la mélancolie?
Saché-je d'où provient, Sirènes, votre ennui
Quand vous vous lamentez, au large, dans la nuit?
Mer, je suis comme toi, plein de voix machinées
Et mes vaisseaux chantants se nomment les années.
Colombe, l'amour et l'esprit
Qui engendrâtes Jésus Christ,
Comme vous j'aime une Marie.
Qu'avec elle je me marie.
En faisant la roue, cet oiseau,
Dont le pennage traîne à terre,
Apparaît encore plus beau,
mais se découvre le derrière.
Mon pauvre cœur est un hibou11
Qu'on cloue, qu'on décloue, qu'on recloue.
De sang, d'ardeur il est à bout.
Tous ceux que j'aime, je les loue.
Oui j'irai dans l'ombre terreuse.12
O mort certaine, ainsi soit-il!
Latin mortel, parole affreuse,
Ibis, oiseau des bords du Nil.
Ce chérubin dit la louange13
Du paradis, où, près des anges
Nous revivrons mes chers amis,
Quand le bon Dieu l'aura permis.
1These texts are taken from a sequence of thirty poems.
The four that Durey did not set to music are about
Orpheus, a Thracian poet of Greek legend who, with
his lyre, could charm even inanimate objects. The
animals are imagined processing, charmed by the poet's
music. Apollinaire sees himself as Orpheus's successor,
using the animals as vehicles to comment on men and
their behaviour. He annotates some of the texts.
2Orpheus's lyre, given to him by Mercury, was made
of the shall of a tortoise.
3Bellerophon was the first to mount Pegasus, the winged
horse. Together they rode against the Chimæra, a monster.
Apollinaire says thet there exist today mayn chimæræ
against which to ride, which are the greatest enimies
of poetry.
4Jason of the Argonauts, who sailed in quest of the Golden
Fleece.
5Eurydice, wife of Orpheus. She died of a snake bite when
fleeing from Aristæus.
6Don Pedro d'Alfaroubeira, Infanta of Protugal. One of
his companions, Gomez de Santistevan, narrated in his
"Historia del Infanta D. Pedro.." that he set off to visit the
seven parts of the world with twelve companions and
four dromedaries, returning home after three years and
four months.
7Murex shells were used to extract a purple dye. They have
a tail, perhaps resembling a small tusk
8Magical flies of Lap legend. Some are invisible and kept in
boxes by magicians to be released against robbers, against
whom they sing magical words.
9St. John the Bapist in the desert.
10In the formal pools of the gardens of French Chateaux the
carp grow big and old, rarely seeming to move in the still
water.
11In French a solitary person can also be called an owl.
12Sacred bid in Egyptian legend because the arrival of the
ibis
heralded the flooding of the Nile. Orpheaus went into the
underworld and tried to use his muical powers to release
Eurydice from Hades. Having agrees, Pluto stipulate that,
on
his way out he should not look back to see if she was
following.
He failed when he was almost out.
13On of the faces of the cherubim is that of an ox (Ezekiel
X 14).
From magical Thrace, oh ecstasy!
My steady fingers sound the lyre.
The animals pass by to the sounds
of my tortoise, of my songs.
My hard formal dreams will be able to sit astride you
my destiny with its golden chariot will be your handsome
coachman
who, as reins, will hold phrenetically stretched
my verses, the paragons of all poetry.
The hair of this goat, and even
that of gold for which Jason made such an effort,
is worth nothing when compared to the value
of the hair with which I am in love.
You prey on beauty.
And what women have fallen
victim to your cruelty!
Eve, Eurydice, Cleopatra;
I know of another three or four.
I wish to have in my house:
a wife who has good sense,
a cat passing among the books,
friends in all seasons
without which I can not live.
O lion, sad picture
of the pitifully fallen kings,
you are now only ever born in cages
in Hamburg, kept by the Germans.
Don't be lascivious and fearful
like the hare and the lover.
But let your brain always be
the pregnant doe-hare which conceives.
I know of another cony
which quite alive I want to catch.
Its warren is among the thyme
of the valleys of the kingdom of Tenderness.
With his four dromedaries
Don Pedro of Alfaroubeira
wandered throughout the world and admired it.
He did what I would wish to do
if I had four dromedaries.
Happy days, mouse of time,
bit by bit you gnaw my life away.
God! I shall shortly have lived twenty eight years.
and badly lived, for my desire.
Like an elephant with his ivory,
I have a precious blessing in my mouth.
Dead purple-shells!... I buy my glory
at the cost of melodious words.
Work leads to wealth.
Wretched poets, let us work on!
The caterpillar, by working incessantly,
becomes the rich butterfly.
Our flies know some songs
taught to them in Norway by
the ganic flies which are
the gods of the snow.
Fleas, friends, lovers even,
how cruel they are, those who love us!
All our blood flows for them.
Those who are much loved are wretched.
Here is the fragile grasshopper,
the nourishment of Saint John.
May my verses be like it:
a treat for the very best people.
Dolphins, you play in the sea,
yet the waves are still bitter.
Does my joy ever burst out?
Life is still cruel.
Throwing its ink towards the heavens,
Sucking the blood of that which it loves
and finding it delicious,
this inhuman monster, it is myself.
Medusas, miserable heads
whose hair is violet.
You are happy in stormy weather
and I am happy then like you.
Uncertainty, o my delicacies
you and I, we move about
as crayfish move about,
backwards, backwards.
In your moats, in your ponds,
carp, how long you live!
Has death forgotten you,
fish of melancholy?
Know I, Sirens, from whence your trouble comes
when you moan, across the open seas, by night?
Sea, I am like you, full of fabricated voices
and my singing ships are called the years.
Dove, the love and the spirit
which fathered Jesus Christ.
Like you, I love a Mary
Only with her shall I marry.
By raising its fan, this bird
whose plumage trails on the ground,
seems still more beautiful,
but exposes his behind.
My poor heart is an owl
that is nailed, unnailed, renailed.
Of blood, of passion it is now drained.
All those that I love, I praise them.
Yes I shall go into the earthy shade.
Oh certain death, so let it be!
Deadly latin, hideous speech,
Ibis, bird of the banks of the Nile.
This cherub is reciting the praise
of heaven where, near the angels,
we will live once more my dear friends,
once the good Lord has permitted it.
© translated by Christopher Goldsack
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