In the pale afternoon …
In the pale afternoon
the sun sinks into its sunset,
rosy moon-face in a nimbus
of gold dust.
In the sea within a sea
a boat is rowing and rowing,
lover and beloved
flying to dreamland.
The western light broken
in a thousand pieces on the waves,
the oars dripping
with burnished gold.
The boat is grace, and light,
rowing and rowing,
lover and beloved
flying to dreamland.
What became of them?
I don’t know. I remember
a pale twilight, and afterwards,
darkness and the violent sea.
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Metempsychosis
I was a soldier who slept in the bed
of Cleopatra the queen. Her whiteness
and her starry, all-powerful gaze.
That was all.
That gaze! that whiteness and oh! the bed
in which such radiance lay.
The omnipotent smooth-as-marble rose.
That was all.
I battered her backbone in the gauntlet of my arms,
I, a free man, made her forget all about her Antony
(oh! that bed, that gaze, that whiteness …)
That was all.
I, Rufus Gallus, was a soldier of fierce Gallic
blood, and that little imperial yearling
gave in mischief what I filled to the hilt.
That was all.
But why, as she spasmed, did my bronze
pincer-like fingers not throttle
the throat of the shuddering white queen?
That was all.
I was carried off to Egypt. The chain
tore at my scruff. One day I was
eaten by the dogs. My name, Rufus Gallus.
That was all.
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Far Off
Ox, seen in my childhood, stamping in steam
beneath the burning gold of the Nicaraguan sun,
the rich and fertile hacienda, so full of tropical
harmony; dove, flown from the forest, echoing with
wind, and axes, with birds and wild bulls,
I salute you all, you who are my life.
Heavy ox, you summon up the sweet dawn
and its long-ordained ritual: milking the cow,
back when my existence was all whiteness and rose.
And you, mountain dove, cooing lullabyes and flattery,
symbolic of those childhood spring-times
which contain all that there is of Springtime’s divinity.
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The Drop Of Gold
In the green laurel which garlands the forehead,
which caresses dreams and disperses the hours,
dangles a drop’s arousal, like the awakening light,
where the half-opened eyes of dawn catch fire;
oh the show-off sun-storms, oh the extravagant East,
Byzantium’s jewels, Theodora’s diadems;
oh distant Colchis, hailed by the watchman,
to which successive Jasons guide their prows.
Drop of red gold, unrivalled in worth,
evoking, with your imperial color,
autumn’s triumph and the day’s spilled blood,
the ivory foreheads, the mouths like red coals
and the autumnal sadness of mad virgins,
mad for luxury, the mother of melancholy.
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In Winter
In wintry hours, looking at Carolina.
Curled up, dozing in an armchair,
swallowed in her coat of sibylline sable,
near the fire which brightens the salon.
The thin white angora reclines beside her,
rubbing its whiskers against her lace skirt,
and close by, the Chinese porcelain vases,
half-hidden by a Japanese silk screen.
Carolina is languid with sleep’s subtle narcotic.
I enter without speaking a word, shed my grey overcoat;
I go to kiss her face, flushed and yielding
like a red rose where once was a fleur-de-lis.
She opens her eyes, looks at me with her permissive smile ….
Meanwhile the snow falls from the Parisian sky.