Aurore. Break of Day

CHARMES

BREAK OF DAY

THE morose confusion Which serves for me as sleep, Is dissolved by the rose Appearance of the sun. I in my soul advance All winged with confidence: It is the day's first prayer! Scarcely out on the sands, I make admirable steps In the footprints of my reason.

All hail! asleep again In the twinship of your smiles, Friendly similarities That sparkle amid the words! In the hubbub of the bees I will be for you a net, And on the trembling rungs Of my ladder made of gold, My evaporating prudence Already sets its pure foot.

What a dawn on these haunches Which are starting to tremble! Already stretching muscles That had seemed to be asleep: One eager, another yawning; And on a tortoiseshell comb Distracted by vague fingers, From a dream that is still to come, The lazy one is bound up To the premises of its voice. Deducere carmen.

À Paul Poujaud.

What! is it you, fair-weather friends! What were you doing, this night, Soul-mistresses, Ideas, Made courtesans by boredom? - Always wise, they tell me, Our immortal attendance Has never betrayed your roof! We have not been far away But secretive as spiders In the darkness of yourself!

Will you never be by joy made Drunk! see come from the shadows Ten thousand silken suns Woven from your enigmas? Look at what we have done: We have across your abysses Stretched out our primitive threads, And taken from naked nature In a tenuous fine-spun weft Of trembling preparations ...

Their spiritual cobweb, I break it, and set off to find In my own sensual forest The oracles of my song. Being! Universal ear! All the soul prepares itself At the utmost of desire ... It hears itself tremble And sometimes my lips appear To grasp its quivering.

Here are my shadowy vines, The cradles of my hazards! The images are numerous And the equal of my regards ... Every leaf presents to me An accommodating source Where I drink this frail rumour ... I am all pulp, all kernel, Every calyx demands of me That I wait for its fruit.

I do not fear the thorns! The waking is good, though hard! This plundering of absolutes Wants nothing but certainty: It is not to ravish a world Of an injury so profound That will not to the ravisher Be a fruitful injury, And whose own blood assures him Of being the true possessor.

I approach the transparency Of the invisible pond Where swims my eternal Hope Borne breast-high by the water. Its neck intersects vague time And raises on high this wave Which makes a neck without equal ... It senses beneath calm waters The infinite profundity, And shivers up from the toe.