Ébauche d'un serpent. Sketch of a Serpent

SKETCH OF A SERPENT

To Henri Ghéon.

ABOUT the tree, the breeze placates The viper whose skin I have donned; A smile, which discloses the tooth And illuminates its appetites, Around the Garden risks and roves, And my triangle of emerald Shoots out its thin divided tongue ... Beast am I, but a beast most keen, Of which the venom although vile Leaves the wise hemlock well behind!

Sweet is the leisure of the times! Tremble, mortals! I am most strong When my sufficiency not shown, I yawn and shatter inner strength! The splendour of the sky incites This wriggle which is my disguise Of animal simplicity; Come to me thus, rash careless race! I am resourceful and erect, Equal to your necessity!

O sun, O sun!... Brilliance at fault! You who obscure death, O Sun, Beneath a blue and golden tent Where flowers consult only themselves; With impenetrable delights, You, my most proud of accomplices, And the highest of all my snares, You shield the heart from knowing that The universe is but a flaw In the purity of Non-being!

Powerful Sun, who sounds the call To being, and your attendant flames, You who from out the confines of sleep Deceptively paints the countryside, Stirrer up of those joyous ghosts That render subject to the eyes The obscure presence of the soul, Always to me the amusing lie You scatter upon the absolute, O king of darkness made of flame!

Lend to me your primitive warmth, Which comes where my icy sluggishness Muses upon some unhappiness According to my twisted nature ... This charming place where quickened flesh Fell and mingled is to me most dear! My fury, here, makes itself ripe; I counsel it and accumulate, I hear myself, and in my coils, My meditation murmuring ...

O Vanity! Premier Cause! Wherewith the One who rules the Skies, In a voice that was the light itself Opened the spacious universe. As weary of his pure show, God Himself shattered the obstacle To his perfect eternity; He had made the One who dissipates In consequences, his Principle, Among the stars, his Unity.

Heaven, his error! Time, his ruin! And the animal abyss, yawning!... In the beginning what a fall As glittering replaced nothingness!... But, was not the first word of his Word, MYSELF!... The most superb of stars Spoke as had their mad creator, I am!... I will be!... I illumine The diminution of the divine By all the lights of the Seducer!

Radiant object of my hatred, You whom I have loved passionately, You whose duties in the inferno Gave to this lover that empire, Look at yourself within my darkness! Before your image funereal, Pride of my own sombre mirror, Your disquiet was so profound That breathing out upon the clay Became one long sigh of despair!

In vain, have You, from out the mire, Fashioned these facile children, Who call to mind Your triumphant deeds By singing Your praise the livelong day! No sooner shaped, no sooner breathing, Master Serpent lets out a hiss, The beautiful creatures You create! Hello there, says he, newcomers! You are still these stark naked men, O beasts so white and blissfully smug!

In that likeness detestable, You were made, and I detest you! As I hate the Name who created So many imperfect prodigies! I am the One who modifies, I alter the heart that trusts in me, With a touch sure and mysterious!... We will change these malleable works, And these timid evasive snakes Into reptiles most furious!

My Infinite Intelligence Touches in the soul of humans An instrument of my vengeance That was put together by your hands! And your disguised Paternity, Although, within its starry chamber, It does no more than the incense greet, However the excess of my charms Will ruin with distant alarms Disrupting plans omnipotent!

I go, I come, I slide, I plunge, I vanish within a pure heart! Was there ever a breast so hard That had no power to lodge a dream! Whomsoever you be, am not I That first light of complacency Within your soul, when it loves itself? I am at the depth of your favour That inimitable savour Which you find nowhere but in yourself!

Eve, long ago, I did surprise, Amidst her very first musings, Her lips half-open to those spirits That arose from the soothing roses. Thus this perfection appeared to me, Her flank vast and dappled with gold Fearing neither the sun nor man; All offered to the gaze of the air, The soul still stupid, and as though Perplexed at the threshold of the flesh.

O what a mass of beatitude, You are so beautiful, just prize For one who is all solicitude To the good and the greater minds! So that your lips be by something seized Sufficient if it be by your sighs! The purest are to the worst inclined, The hardest are the easiest bruised ... Just so with me, you softened me, From whom arose the vampires!

Yes! From my perch in the foliage Reptile with ecstasies of a bird, However much my babbling Weaves with my cunning camouflage, I drink you in, O deaf lovely one! Calmly, light, with my ponderous charms, Thus furtively I dominate, Eye burning in the gold for your fleece, Your nape enigmatic and replete With the secrets of your movement!

I have been present like a perfume, Like the aroma of an idea From which can be elucidated Only its own insidious depths! And I have troubled you, naive one, O languidly persuaded flesh, Else how could I intimidate, As you tottered in the splendour! Soon, I will be you, I wager, Already your shades of meaning change!

(Such superb simplicity Demands immense consideration! The transparency of her glance, Foolishness, pride, felicity, Guards well the lovely citadel! Know he created fortuity, And by the rarest of the arts, Wherewith to entice the pure heart; It is my strength, it is my aim, It is the means toward my end!)

Gold, of a most dazzling venom, Veins the flimsy systems of thought Wherein the idle and gentle Eve To these vague dangers pledges herself! As underneath a burden of silk Trembles thus the skin of this prey Accustomed to the one azure!... But the finest gauze my method knows, Nor the thread invisible and sure, Count as much as the web of my style!

Be gold, my tongue! be gold with the Gentlest words of which you know! Allusions, fables, delicacies, A thousand chiselled silences, Use any means that will do her harm: Nothing that flatters not yet misleads To lose herself in my designs, Docile as the slopes returning To the depths of the blue fountains Streams that from the heavens descend!

O what prose without parallel, What of the mind have I not cast Within the downy labyrinth Of so magnificent an ear! There, think I, nothing will be lost; All can sway a suspended heart! A certain triumph! if my word, As a soul by a treasure obsessed, Like a bee round a corolla Stirs no more from the golden ear!

«Nothing, I prompt her, is less sure Than the divinity of words, Eve! Living science bursts asunder The enormity of this ripe fruit! Heed not the Being old and pure Who made the briefest bite accursed! What if your mouth creates a dream, This thirst you dream of is the sap, Half the delight is yet to be, Eternity melts in the mouth, Eve!»

She drank in my throwaway words Which constituted a work most strange; Her glance, sometimes, losing an angel As to my branches it returned. The most crafty of animals You mock at for his clumsiness, O treacherous and big with evils, Is only a voice amid the leaves! - But serious our Eve remained As underneath the branch she listened!

«Dear Soul, say I, soft dwelling-place Of all forbidden ecstasy, Sense you not the sinuous love That I have from the Father filched? I have it, this essence of Heaven, Its aftertaste more sweet than honey Organised so delicately ... Take then this fruit ... Lift up your arm! For gathering what you desire Your lovely hand was given you!»

What silence flutters in a lash! But what breath in the sombre breast Gnawed by the shadow of the Tree! The other is as a pistil bright! - Whistle, whistle! to me it sang! And I felt each numbered trembling, Along my subtle lash-like length, Of those coils that so encumber me: They rolled all the way from the beryl Of my crest, to the verge of peril!

Genius! O long impatience! At the end, the time has arrived, As one small step to the new Science Leaps thus forth on these naked feet! The marble aspires, the gold curves! These fair roots of shade and of amber Tremble upon evolution's brink!... It is faltering, the great urn, In which there goes evading consent The conspicuously taciturn!

Of pleasure that you yourself propose Yield, dear body, yield to the lures! That your thirst for metamorphous Around about the Tree of Death Engenders there a range of poses! Come without coming! form the steps As vaguely as the weight of roses ... Dance, dear body ... Do not think! Here delights themselves are causes Sufficient for the effect of things!...

O madly that I offer myself This infertile pleasure-seeking: See so fresh a back's long pure length Tremble with disobedience!... Its essence already given up Of wisdom and of illusions, The whole Tree of Knowledge itself Is dishevelled with its visions, Tosses its great body which plunges Into the sun, and draws up the dream!

Tree, great Tree, Figure of the Heavens, Irresistible Tree among trees, Who from out the weakness of stones, Seeks after delicious juices, You who push through such labyrinths Whereby the darkness unanimous Will rise up to be lost in the blue Sapphire of eternal morning, Sweet loss, aroma or gentle breeze, Or as it were predestined dove,

O Singer, O secret drinker Of the deepest of precious stones, Cradle of the dreamy reptile Who disturbs Eve in her reveries, Great Being so restless to know, Who always, the better to see, Increases at the call of your heights, You who in purest gold raise up Your strong arms, your misty branches, Whatever, hollowed to the abyss,

You hold off somewhat infinity Which is only your development, And all that is from tomb to nest You in your total Knowledge sense! But this old lover of failures, In the idle gold of parching suns, Comes in your branches to twist himself; His glance makes your treasure tremble. He will shake down the fruits of death, Of despair and of disorder!

Fine serpent, reared in the blue, I whistle, with such delicacy, Offering to the glory of God The triumph of my unhappiness ... Sufficient for me that in the skies, The immense hope of bitter fruits Drives crazy the sons of the mire ... - That thirst which made you grow so great, To where the Being exalts the strange Omnipotence of Nothingness!