Apparition

by Stéphane Mallarmé

Sea Breeze

The flesh is sad, Alas! and I have read all the books.

Let’s go! Far off. Let’s go! I sense

that the birds, intoxicated, fly

deep into unknown spume and sky!

Nothing – not even old gardens mirrored by eyes –

can restrain this heart that drenches itself in the sea,

O nights, or the abandoned light of my lamp,

on the void of paper, that whiteness defends,

no, not even the young woman feeding her child.

I will go! Steamer, straining at your ropes

lift your anchor towards an exotic rawness!

A Boredom, made desolate by cruel hope

still believes in the last goodbye of handkerchiefs!

And perhaps the masts, inviting lightning,

are those the gale bends over shipwrecks,

lost, without masts, without masts, no fertile islands...

But, oh my heart, listen to the sailors’ chant! 

Apparition 

La lune s'attristait. Des séraphins en pleurs

Rêvant, l'archet aux doigts, dans le calme des fleurs

Vaporeuses, tiraient de mourantes violes

De blancs sanglots glissant sur l'azur des corolles.

—C'était le jour béni de ton premier baiser.

Ma songerie aimant à me martyriser

s'enivrait savamment du parfum de tristesse

Que même sans regret et sans déboire laisse

La cueillaison d'un Rêve au coeur qui l'a cueilli.

J'errais donc, l'oeil rivé sur le pavé vieilli

Quand avec du soleil aux cheveux, dans la rue

Et dans le soir, tu m'es en riant apparue

Et j'ai cru voir la fée au chapeau de clarté

Qui jadis sur mes beaux sommeils d'enfant gâté

Passait, laissant toujours de ses mains mal fermées

Neiger de blancs bouquets d'étoiles parfumées. 

Tomb (Of Verlaine) 

The black rock enraged that the north wind rolls it on

Will not stop itself, nor, under pious hands, still

Cease testing its resemblance to human ill

As if to bless some fatal cast of bronze.

Here nearly always if the ring-dove coos

This immaterial grief with many a fold of cloud

Crushes the ripe star of tomorrows, whose crowd

Will be silvered by its scintillations. Who

Following the solitary leap

External now of our vagabond – seeks

Verlaine? He’s hidden in the grass, Verlaine

Only to catch, naïvely, not drying it with his breath 

And without the lip drinking there, at peace again, 

A shallow stream that’s slandered, and named Death. 

The Azure 

The serene irony of the eternal Sky

Depresses, with the indolence of flowers,

The impotent poet cursing poetry

Across a sterile waste of leaden Hours.

Fleeing, with eyes shut fast, I feel it blight

With all the intensity of crushing remorse

My empty soul. Where can I fly? What haggard night

Can stifle this scornful torment at its source?

Roll in, you fogs, and pour out ashen haze

In tattered rags of mist traversing heaven;

Smother the livid swamp of autumn days

And roof them in a grand and silent haven!

And you, dear Boredom, rise from Lethean pools,

Dredging their shoals for pallid reeds and slime;

Block with unwearying hand the great blue holes

Malicious birds keep gouging time after time.

Still unremitting! let sad chimneys smoke,

And let the smothering soot, a wandering prison,

In blackening trains of horror rise and choke

The sun now fading yellow on the horizon!

- The Sky is dead. - Toward you I run!

Bestow, O matter,

Forgetfulness of Sin and the cruel Ideal

Upon this martyr who comes to share the litter

Where the happy herd of men is made to kneel.

For there I long, because at last my brain,

Like an empty rouge-pot on a dressing stand,

Has lost the art of decking out its pain,

To yawn morosely toward a humble end…

In vain! The Azure triumphs. I hear it sing

In all the bells. The more to frighten us,

It rises in its wicked glorying

From living metal, a blue angelus.

It rolls in with the fog, and like a sword

It penetrates your inmost agony.

Revolt or flight is useless and absurd;

For I am haunted. The Sky! the Sky! the Sky! the Sky!