Profusion du soir, poème abandonné ... Profusion of evening

PROFUSION OF EVENING,

An Abandoned Poem...

O Sun sustaining the powerful idleness Which hovers and submits to the contemplator's eye, Look!... I drink the celestial wine, and I caress The mysterious seed of the most extreme height.

I bear in a burning breast my lucid tenderness, I play with the fires of the antique inventor; But by degrees the god has lost all interest In the crimson of the air which alters so slowly.

Let the pure pasture defeat every idea, The work of settling down within their emptied realm Knows even without the birds their entire grandeur.

The cool Angel's clear eye is modest in its haste, High nativity of a star elucidated, A diamond influence that cradles the splendour ...

O evening, you come to spread a tranquil delight, Horizon of all sleeps, wonder of pious hearts, Persuasive in approach, insidious reptile, And rose inhaled by an immovable mortal Whose golden eye is bound to the skies' promises.

On your glowing altars his favourable regard Burns, the abstracted soul, all of a precious past.

It adores in the gold which is made adorable Constructing from vapour a memorable temple, Suspends in the sombre air its risk and its reef, And flies, drunk with the flames of a passive triumph, On the gulf of golden bridges to rejoin Fortune; - While on the distant banks of the Theatre of thought, Under a flimsy mask the slim moon is gliding ...

... The wine is drunk, the man yawns, and broken is the flask. To the marvels of the void he maintains a rancour; But the charm of evening fumes upon the balcony A confusion of women and of floating flecks ...

- O Consultant!... Solemn stopping place!... The Balance Of a gold finger weighing the motives of silence! O sensitive wisdom between the blazing gods! - From too beautiful space, preserve me, baluster! There, the sea calls to me!... There, leans the illustrious Venus Vertiginous with her soft melting arms!

My eye, though tied to the supple fate of the waves, And drinking as in dream aquarius eternal, Guards well a fixed chamber and is capable of worlds; And my cupidity for profound surprises Only just sees across the transparent cradle This woman of foam and algae and gold who rolls On the sand and the salt the grinding of the swell.

All the same I place in the skies a spirit's gambols; I see in their vapours things from countries unknown, Goddesses of flowers pretending to be clouds, The powers of the storm wandering half-naked, And on the rocks of the air which evening darkens, Such a divinity leans down. An angel swims. It restores all of space at each turn of its back. I, who casts here below the shadow of somebody, However nimble in its full sovereign power, I sense who strengthens me, and pure who disdains me! Living in a future's breast the memory marine, All the bodies of my choice are bathing in my glance!

*

A foaming crested wave, vivid and enormous Blocks me, powerfully pure, and folds itself flat.

Roll all the way to my heart the golden distance, Wave!... Tottering suns of the ravished horizons, You will not go further than the obscure line Which divides the gods from the shadows where I live.

A breaker long and slow with the weight of the sea Scatters the ponderous charms of its white torpor Where it makes light a joy, a thirst in being blue, Pulling the dark exhausted vessel of vapour ...

But heavy and snow-clad the mountains of twilight, The cloud-banks too full and their breasts overgenerous, All the majesty of Olympia recedes, For here is the signal, here the gold of good-byes, And the spaces inhale the minutely small craft ...

Heavy pediments of sleep always uncompleted, Curtains with a ruby peculiarly held back For the faulty regard of a sombre planet, The times are accomplished, the desires are your own, And from the golden mouth, fighting against its yawns, There are torn forth the words that enchant the poet ...

The times are accomplished, the desires are your own.

Farewell, Farewell!... Towards you, O my fine images, My arms offer always the insatiable port! Come then, be frightened off, ruffle up your feathers, Far-flying adventurous birds hounded by death! Be quick now, be quick now!... The night presses!... Tantalus Is dying! And the ephemeral joy of the skies!

A rose not long ago of the fatal shadows, A rose that is the very last rose of the west Becomes horribly pale in the spacious evening ...

I see no more flutter at the belvedere's mast A drunken sylph wearing the colours of the flag, And this great port shrinks down to a dark landing-stage Visited by the chill wind I feel on my skin!

Close up now! Close up now! O windows offended! Great eyes which are dreading the veritable night!

And you, on these great heights with stars so thickly sown, Accept, made pregnant with mystery and ennui, A maternity which silences any thoughts ...