Works

Reader, have you ever breathed deeply,
with slow savour and intoxicated sense,
a church's saturating grain of incense,
or the long-lasting musk in a sachet?

Profound magical spell where we...

Alone at last! Nothing is to be heard but the rattle of a few tardy and tired-out cabs. There will be silence now, if not repose, for several hours at least....

My heart was like a bird that fluttered joyously
And glided free among the tackle and the lines!
The vessel rolled along under a cloudless sky
An angel, tipsy, gay, full of the radiant sun.
...

Tranquil as a sage and gentle as one who's cursed. I said:
I love you, oh my beauty, my charmer

many a time
your debauches without thirst, your soul-less loves,
your longing for the infinite...

Here's the criminal's friend, delightful evening:
come like an accomplice, with a wolf's loping:
slowly the sky's vast vault hides each feature,
and restless man becomes a savage creature.
...

That tribe of prophets with the burning eyes
Is on the road, their babies on their backs,
Who satisfy their appetite attacks
With treasured breasts that always hang nearby.
...

O Beauty! do you visit from the sky
Or the abyss? infernal and divine,
Your gaze bestows both kindnesses and crimes,
So it is said you act on us like wine.

Your eye contains the evening and the dawn;...

I give to you these verses, that if in
Some future time my name lands happily
To bring brief pleasure to humanity,
The craft supported by a great north wind,

Your memory, like tales from ancient times,...

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...

My sister, my child
Imagine how sweet
To live there as lovers do!
To kiss as we choose
To love and to die
In that land resembling you!
The misty suns
Of shifting skies...

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,...

The great-hearted servant of whom you were jealous,
sleeping her sleep in the humble grass,
shouldn't we take her a few flowers?
The dead, the poor dead, have griefs like ours,...

On the old oak benches, more shiny and polished
than links of a chain that were, each day, burnished
rubbed by our human flesh, we, still un-bearded,
trailed our ennui, hunched, round-shouldered,...

Free man, you'll love the ocean endlessly!
It is your mirror, you observe your soul
In how its billows endlessly unroll
Your spirit's bitter depths are there to see.
...

Reveille was sounding on barrack-squares,
and the wind of dawn blew on lighted stairs.

It was the hour when a swarm of evil visions
torments swarthy adolescents, when pillows hum:...

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.
...

An Old Colophon

Passion sits on the skull
Of Humanity,
And this infidel enthroned
Laughs shamelessly,

And gaily blows round bubbles
That will fly,
As if to join with worlds...

Although your wayward brows
Give you a curious air
Angelic not at all,
Witch of the tempting stare,

I love you with a passion
Terrible and odd,
With the obeisance...