Works

I have not forgotten our little white retreat
Where we were neighbors to the town of busy streets;
Our plaster Venus and Pomona barely could
Conceal their nakedness within our meagre wood....

I love the naked ages long ago
When statues were gilded by Apollo,
When men and women of agility
Could play without lies and anxiety,
And the sky lovingly caressed their spines,...

I love the thought of ancient, naked days
When Phoebus gilded statues with his rays.
Then women, men in their agility
Played without guile, without anxiety,
And, while the sky stroked lovingly their skin,...

I love you as I love the night's high vault
O silent one, 0 sorrow's lachrymal,
And love you more because you flee from me,
And temptress of my nights, ironically
You seem to hoard the space, to take to you...

I've not forgotten, near to the town,
our white house, small but alone:
its Pomona of plaster, its Venus of old
hiding nude limbs in the meagre grove,
and the sun, superb, at evening, streaming,...

I adore you, the nocturnal vault's likeness,
o vast taciturnity, o vase of sadness:
I love you, my beauty, the more you flee,
grace of my nights, the more you seem,
to multiply distances, ah ironically,...

Is it not pleasant, now we are tired,
and tarnished, like other men, to search for those fires
in the furthest East, where, again, we might see
morning's new dawn, and, in mad history,...

The poet in his cell, unkempt and sick,
who crushes underfoot a manuscript,
measures, with a gaze that horror has inflamed,
the stair of madness where his soul was maimed.
...

Singular goddess, brown as night, and wild,
Perfumed of fine tobacco smoke and musk,
Work of some Faust, some wizard of the dusk,
Ebony sorceress, black midnight's child,
...

That kind heart you were jealous of, my nurse
Who sleeps her sleep beneath the humble turf,
I'd like to give her flowers, wouldn't you?
The dead, the poor dead, have their sorrows too,...

Dull soul, to whom the battle once was sweet,
Hope, who had spurred your ardour and your fame
Will no more ride you! Lie down without shame
Old horse, who makes his way on stumbling feet.
...