Équinoxe. Equinoxe

EQUINOX

Elegy

To look ...

I alter ... Who flees me?... All its motionless leaves Overburden the tree I see ... Its thick arms are weary of lulling my sibyls: My silence has wasted its voice.

My soul, if its hymn was like unto a fountain Which with all of its waters sings, Instead of deep water where a faraway stone Marks the tomb of many a bird.

On a simple bed of sand as fine as ashes Sleep the steps which I have mislaid, And I sense myself falling live under shadows By way of their traces confused.

I distinctly mislay Psyche the sleepwalker In the water's too pure veils Whose calm and whose time is disturbed by a bubble Which releases itself from this tomb.

To herself then, perhaps, She talks and She pardons, But concedes with her eyes tight shut, She flees faithful from me, and, tender, commits me To inanimate destinies.

She leaves in my heart her inexplicable loss, And this heart which beats without hope Disputes with Persephone Eurydice stung On the pure breast by the black snake ...

Sombre dying witness of our tender annals, O sun, you are just like our love, The invincible charm of infernal beaches Calls from shores from which none return.

Autumn, transparency! O solitude enhanced By such sadness and liberty! Each thing is bright to me when it has departed; That which is no more becomes clear.

While wherever I fasten my stony regard With the fixed and the hard word «Why?», A quivering dark, the shadow of an eyelid Flutters between myself and me ...

O what eternity of spontaneous absence Comes all at once to cut us short?... A single falling leaf has divided the year With its light as air occurrence.

Towards me, the fiery rest, leaves feeble and dry, Race on with their fragile rumour, And you, pale Sun, with your last quiver of arrows, Pierce me with these times which must die ...

Yes, I wake myself at last, grasped by an autumn wind Which lifts up a flight red and sad; Such a purple panic of gold hordes amaze me That I am irked and that I exist!