My Books...

By Stéphane Mallarmé

My books closed again on Paphos’ name,
It delights me to choose with solitary genius

A ruin, by foam-flecks in thousands blessed
Beneath hyacinth, far off, in days of fame.

Let the cold flow with its silence of scythes,
I’ll not ululate here in a ‘no’ that’s empty
If this frolic so white near the ground denies
To each site the honour of false scenery.

My hunger regaled by no fruits here I see
Finds equal taste in their learned deficiency:
Let one burst with human fragrance and flesh!

While my love pokes the fire, foot on cold iron
I brood for a long time perhaps with distress
On the other’s seared breast of an ancient Amazon.

Sigh
 

My soul, towards your brow where O calm sister,
An autumn dreams, blotched by reddish smudges,

And towards the errant sky of your angelic eye
Climbs: as in a melancholy garden the true sigh
Of a white jet of water towards the Azure!
– To the Azure that October stirred, pale, pure,
That in the vast pools mirrors infinite languor,
And over dead water, where the leaves wander
The wind, in russet throes, dig their cold furrow,
Allows a long ray of yellow light to flow.

Homage
 

Each Dawn however numb
To raise a fist obscure
Against trumpets of azure
Sounded by her, the dumb,

Has the shepherd with his gourd
Joined to a rod struck harshly
Along the path to be
Till the vast stream’s outpoured
 

Already thus solitary
You live O Puvis
De Chavannes.

Never alone
 

Lead our age to quench its thirst
From the shroud-less nymph, the one
Whom your glory will rehearse.