A chaque jour
Childhood
When the city, at Christmas, kneels around The churches squaring upright their tall tower, Waits for midnight to strike in the felt-clouded sky, When the snow swarms like flies and whirls Against the russet panes of the lanterns, it is toward you, Mother, that my heart returns, and toward the faith Of my childhood, and toward the ancient prayers Of my little hands clasped among your own.
In my soul, candles burn, one by one, The incense smokes, and there revives, in a fragrance Of high mass and warm wax that drips, The credulous midnights and my rapture, whole.
Mother, I hear your voice that sings, and it is sweet to me, Nestled against your skirt, and well-behaved, my knees Numb, to listen to that murmur of cool water. I would like to embrace you, but dare not, the manger Is there, so close, fascinating me with its golds, Its shepherds and the ox and the donkey, and I fall asleep, And stiffen, and half-open my eyelids. I see, through tears of sleep, the lights Stretch out immeasurably and riddle the air With arrows that soon become a clear lake Where my dazzled lashes bathe… Then the doors Open in a great cry of the organ, and you carry me off Quickly, and the icy wind rushing into the vestibule, Dark and sudden, makes me cherish all the more your dear love, For in it I vaguely sense a defense Against winter and a sure shelter from the fears of childhood. Then long we walk in the dark, and in your hand My hand trembles, and behind us, on the path, The tracks of our steps in the snow go one After another to join, at the sky’s edge, the moon.
Visitor of the Garden…
Visitor of the garden, take care that the roses Do not shed their petals at the cry of the long-closed gates.
Do not go and wake the granite lion, Who for so many days has yawned upon a pilaster That bees have made their nest inside his mouth. Fly, make your heels lighter than the stars That glide through the warm nights, silently…
Friend, our grandparents lived there to a great old age. They were good people whose memory, in us, Is blended with the wholesome, frank scent of the family Wardrobe, fragrances of fruit, of fresh linen, Fragrances nourished on sober, unaffected virtue. Simple hearts, they kept in their affable wisdom A sweet, old-fashioned air of proverb and fable, And, gladly speaking of their youthful seasons, They blessed the vanished autumn evening When the lord of the place was putting up his wine in casks, And both, far from the cheering, the torches, the songs, Far from the flutes leading the dance upon the lawns, They had pledged their troth beneath the jealous holm oaks…
It is there, in that enclosure, still full of their souls, That my little childhood crossed their decline, And my first gaze was startled by their wrinkles. Now, in the beds of the dry fountains, Lizards sleep beneath the stones, torpid. The grass lovingly climbs the green knees Of a frightened nymph, and alone, in the great silence, A horsefly buzzes and sways inside a flower.
Meanwhile, heavy with juice, pressing his bare foot Into the mud, obese September has returned, And his breath has roasted the grapes upon the trellises. Hands, I hear hands brushing the russet vine-leaves, The scissors lisp insinuating and soft, I hear the bending willow of the baskets creak…
O charm of the past that steals away at evening, And prowls, and makes the leaves of the pathways crack! A pebble has rolled beneath footsteps; the watering can Resounds invisible in the paved cisterns; The fountain wakes; a voice, that one would say Had come from the depths of time, begins an air, And in the old basin, all a-tremble, crumbles The pale image of Love who gazed at himself there.
Visitor of the garden, if your feet upon the road Have bled, reddening the tough grass that browses The donkey, widower of Silenus, wandering and dethroned, If your heart, sumptuous and wretched, was born A Poet, apt to suffer from the visionary ill, Come, the god of this house is a benevolent god, Sit down on the mossy bench and fear no more. Cast into oblivion the bad books you have read, Cast into the blazing evening the bundle of your faults. Then steep your soul again in the memory of the hosts Who, simply, as the reward for a fine, upright love, Savored the divine peace in this place. Happy, they knew the long marriages, Tender feminine languor of the years, Caress, in the heart, of an old Indian summer sun! Happy, for they were able, cured of bitter envy, To smile, over their shoulder, at the life They had lived, and which is no more, at the far sky’s edge, Like Paris in the evening, seen from the sad suburbs, No more than a little gold that trembles in the blue ashes.
Smoke-Rings
O those dreams in my cigarettes, so often! Images, on the ceiling, of poplars, of vines And meadows flooded by April, to the lines Of the hillsides, where always an old windmill, Armless, its roof leaning over the horizon, listens To see if the miller’s donkey is still climbing the road.
Province, in this cold night, whose ray Of dawn will tomorrow awaken the landscape, So simple one can sketch it in three strokes of a pencil, And smiling with tenderness like a face.
Is it the irritation of tobacco, is it the hour, And being alone, this evening, in my room? or, down there, In sleeplessness, might not a prudent heart have Trembled for me? Who knows, sometimes, why one weeps?
Imagery
Province, August sun, white houses dead, Flowerpots on the windowsills, drowsy cats, Old men hugging the walls toward one another, very slow, Or endlessly chewing over their lives on their doorsteps.
And sometimes there they are, side by side, the old ones, On a bench, in the green shade raining from the trees, Their skin kneaded with warm gold like ancient marbles, Impassive, silent, flies filling their eyes…
Province, languor of the Sunday bells. Behind the curtains of a window, one sees Young girls smiling, their torsos straight In their chairs. O monastic recreations!
So you used to smile, in our afternoons, When I was twelve, my cousin, and you sixteen, And when, my cheek ablaze, full of strange disquiet, I breathed your fingers clasped between my warmed ones…
Province, old hands that snuffed the candles, Old hands arranging fruits upon the sideboards, Province, what regrets pierce you in the evenings, And the windows of your houses, what are they waiting for?
Once, gallops, horns, and cries, Cracking flights of whips, love, chance, and war, And the windows trembled with all their body of glass At the rolling tumult of coaches bound for Paris.
Now, dust fallen and life extinguished. Dead the inn where the tall-booted postilions, Ready to leave, gambled a round of wine at dice, No more grooms at the troughs, no bucket that clinks.
Finished the drama of the high roads, exhausted The marvelous treasure of fine imagery, And the Province weeps at its windows, full of sorrow… May these verses reach her broken heart.
The Other
The Other had hair of wild gold, a blaze, Or else, streaming in the wind, the flame of a torch! And supple, cruel arms, like a rosebush That, for love of an oak, entwines and strips it, Sucks its blood, to flower from it. Her eyes Were changeable, like the sky: sometimes blue As, in the sun, the sea, when one swims underwater And the depths have gleams of fair scales. In those eyes, of pure water then, what have I not, Even to doubting if their treachery were a dream,
Glimpsed of childlike innocence, down there, In that marine depth where the soul plunges!
But no. The storm broods, crouching on the waves, And swells, laden with the dead weight of autumn, And, black with rain and blue with lightning, bursts and thunders, Like a ripe throat where sobs are rolling. And beneath the burning block of sky that overhangs, In the shadow of volcanoes of clouds, the sea Immensely streaked and livid turns leaden…
Eyes of the Other, suffering, blue, now so clear, Soft light between her lashes bathing her cheek, Then storm, swirling of leprous water and of mud!
My eighteen years, ah! mad year! trembling love, April in the orchard drenched with rain and white With that snow of the apple trees, timid love Like the morning mist in the damp grass, Gray lucerne, powdered with dew, where the hunter In passing hollows green paths! And her sweetness Was of a folded rose where the dawn, At the hour of twilight, still quivers…
Fear of daring, blushes and a shivering voice, Dear prelude! and to feel for the first time, To feel there, beneath her hand, the virile pride in the soul, To breathe that rich flower, a woman’s breast! And so virgin and so young is the flesh, so deep The shock of sudden pleasure that crushes it, That with her, and like the wax that melts, The heart softens and flows and sizzles with joy! O that perfume of mingled bodies, dense and vermilion, That smell of ripe harvests and of sun! And the mouth, which wholly and fervently gives itself As a chalice opens to the storm, is astonished… And the eyes, their ecstasy and their enchantment! The eyes like a net over the naked mistress! The eyes, changed, already graver, of the lover Who now is yours, O sorrow so soon arrived!
Yet what tenderness at our awakenings, A plant’s slowness to live, and how vague Our bodies in those lagoons of half-sleep, And so light, like boats upon the waves. Her soul was the wild thrush that, in the evening, Having pillaged black grapes from the vineyards, Lies between two furrows, at the hour when the shadow stirs And swells at the east and breaks into daybreak, Its feathers ruffled and still red with lees, Dead drunk. O the sweet mornings gorged with love,
And sole good memory perhaps, when her head Rolling like wreckage at sea adrift, Her mown-down arms seemed lilies in the storm. O fatigue, opium surer than forgiveness! She was like a child and wounded, being weary And so weak, and said I-love-yous in a low voice. She was that child without a friend and so well-behaved Whose mother hides her tears while kissing her… And pale and bruised, from what bleeding rose Had these petals fallen upon her face?
But, soon after, the fear of suffering, my shivers Merely at finding her a woman again by her ways Of sharpening her nails at length, and her grace In quickly pinning her hat before the mirror…
Behind the Door
The house weeps in its gutter, In the hearth a charcoal fire burns, The tea, from the teapot’s spout, Steams and smells good, And I dream of ancient loves, The cigar at my lips, time flies. Suddenly, through the slats of the shutters, A flash of light!
A gas lamp at the end of the street Sends out a shrill, fluting, plaintive song… In the silence of the untimely hour I tremble like a fearful child.
Someone is there, behind the door. Do I not hear them scratching the wood? Someone is there. It is she, the Dead Woman, The beloved mistress of old.
What thirst then outlives her mouth That each day I forget a little more? What desire for love, other and fierce, Can torment a body that is no more?
Go away, return to the land of souls, I fear the kiss you demand!
Lay Down Your Dear Head…
Lay down your dear head on my breast where My heart can be heard beating wildly, the fool!
Do not dream too high, if you fall asleep, of the Other. Think as you close your eyes of this present that is ours. Think that it is much to have always there, near, A hand for your brow that is a cool balm.
No, nothing is worth this simple gesture and this smile Of two lovers undressing without a word.
So sweet the impatience that makes them pale When their goose-fleshed skin slips into the bed, So sweet the ardent sadness of fatigues Where the dammed flood of tears breaks through its dikes. Ray of early morning at the windowpanes, thin and cold, Making the embrace more tender and more tight, And cracking of the milkmen’s whips, the bell For the dawn mass, in some nunnery, And always, punctual, harsh alarm clocks, Those hammers forging chains upon our destinies.
Fugitives
Ray of early morning, thin, like the blade Of a justice knife above their heads, And, weakness or remorse, their napes already ready For the blows of heaven, in punishment for this exile.
Cowards, already beaten, from the station courtyard, And so puny, so shivering, like the gas Of the broad, deserted boulevard where the eye wanders Far off, in the mists of a March dawn.
Where then their dream? where then that proud love that throbs With the will to shatter all and flee to be free? Where those rages of sacrifice and defiance With which the soul in the ardor of white nights exalts itself?
Poor pride that the cold morning air has sufficed To dash down and fling crestfallen on the asphalt Of these sidewalks glistening with showers. Hearts embittered With rancor nursed in silence, with shame Soon about to burst into quarrel, and rising Slow and red like the sun in the gray sky.
But quickly vanished into the smoking city, Into the shrill din of the merchants, the halo Of lights, the sound, as from the bottom of the sea, Of raucous tramway horns piercing the mist, Carried off into the crowd, and nothing more than a tear Anonymous, lost in the flood of sorrow.
Departure
When you left, at the break of day, pearl gray Was the sea, with the laughter that crashes in And the frolics of its foam, games and fights, They say, of nymphs upon the sand, and songs of flutes, And just as, after the bath, bristled in the air, The evening before, the pink pulp of your flesh, So, naked and wet, stretching over the sea Her pale arms, the dawn shivered in the bitter wind…
And meanwhile, already, the carriage that bore you away Was receding along the dunes the water licks, Pulling this way and that, from jolt to jolt, Now raising its body and its nags on top Of a hillock, now in a fold hidden, Here almost falling to the right and there leaning To the left, lurching and squealing at the axle Beneath the baggage of sorrow of such a farewell, I watched it in the distance flee diminished And plunge into the gaping blue of a cloud…
It was then, only then, that I understood, too late, My fault, and that this sudden drama of departure, The jolt of waking, rising in the room Still dark and that cold November dawn, Those torches, those muffled sounds of doors and steps, Our rigid silence at that last meal, Those leaden faces glimpsed in the mirror, And that last kiss of the lips, ember and ice, Clenching of the frenzied soul, in the instant Of supreme heartbreak when the carriage waits, All these pictures of a cruel crisis Were something lived, atrociously real! I would have liked to cry: “Don’t go, I am wrong, I love you! See my tears, see my arms that I wring, And see my pride on the ground, humbled! Forgive, or better still, work this miracle, forget! And of our old grievances let nothing remain between us, But silence with my brow upon your knees!”
Promenades
to Madame Simone Le Bargy
I
It was I know not what kind of morning, fresh and pearly Like the lively fish with its slimy scales In the drawn net whose meshes drip, A morning of health, young, forgetful, sacred, One of those when you go out on your own legs, at ease, Happy to be robust and that the sky is clear! I wandered over the reefs the sea uncovers, And which in turn, laid bare, the dawn embraces and kisses, The pustulous seaweeds cracked, the green crabs Scratching the mud hid themselves at my approach, Or, more often, surprised in love, sideways Scuttled off, carrying into crevices in the rocks
Their female hanging from their belly. Suddenly, My foot slipping, I had water up to my ankles, That rough water that pinches the flesh of girls And makes them laugh, hands on their throats, at the bath. And meanwhile there shone, oblique, at the level of the swells, Amid shrieking whirlwinds of vermilion birds That seemed to peck at its flames, the sun! And, standing in the wind, women gathering mussels, At the point of a cape plumed with spray, Their bodies straight in the floating folds of brown rags, Rose up proudly against the pink sky, like Victories of bronze and gold beating their wings!
So I wandered, my brow toward the east, my eyes Dazzled, my soul vague and divinely drunk, Full of an astonishment at going, at seeing, at living, And moved to tears by the mysterious gift That was made to me of the world on that morning, Content with everything, with nothing, with the mere sound of my steps, Listening to myself breathe and not understanding, And with my lips seeking your mouth, O Destiny!
II
After those sandy beaches, where the mica Sparkles like flint rubbed together, And that sun hailing upon the sea, the grotto Where my foot ventured the other afternoon, Imprisoned in nets of brown seaweed A half-light of aquarium and of moon. Coolness from between the rocks that flowed In a shower of shadow on my nape! It is there, In the rustlings of crab and woodlouse, That I found your body still warm, O Dead Woman!
It is only a dream… no, for do I not hear The seashells crackling beneath my steps? And the cold water where my hand dips is as real As the rock my fingernail scratches is real, And, behind me, on the side of the sea, Whose muffled echoes, when the sea wind enters, Roll in thunderclaps at the bottom of the cavern, As far as the eye can see the sky is clear!
Beauty, flames of joy in my unworthy eye, Dazzlements that make my eyelid blink. From her wounded flank her blood flows. She must Have come ashore, to die here, in this lost corner. She was sleeping, at dawn, on the smooth sea… Like a jellyfish, at the surface, toward the blue Her luminous, pure belly emerged. Some steamer, perhaps, with a stroke of its propeller…
III
Ah! autumn and its ends of day, in the old village, And its black skeletons, against the still-bright sky, Of burned trees shivering in the sea wind, And the muffled collapse of gray waves on the beach.
Here is the little harbor and its acrid perfume Of brine, and the ghost-like bark returning, Heavy and massive, with its catch in its belly, And here are all the lighthouse fires one by one. And it is the hour when one knocks at the doors of inns.
For Verlaine
I --- Cour Saint-François
The courtyard has not changed since you. The brats In the gutter of dirty water play and squabble. Empty casks, piled up, handcarts Clutter it, and the trains shunt level With the roofs, and one can hear, toward the nearby station, A signal turning with a clinking of chain.
You came here, alone, after ten years, alone, like a dead man Returning, forgotten by all, and your luggage, A thin parcel that one tosses aside, was heavy with remorse And genius and promises to be good.
O vagrant lodged for the night, the innkeeper’s eye Follows you! What criminal are you? from what fault Do you return so weary, the day done? Thus your life: a number in a rooming house.
Go, take your key hanging from the nail, take your candle, And go up. These shoes at the doors, they too Have dragged themselves by what road to here? Poor garret, with that city around it, Monstrous, unbridled, and those evenings when you burn With the desire to go toward the wild laughter of the girls! And what sobs, then, in the silence, fit to rend The soul, that the neighbor listens to without understanding.
II
Passer-by of the evening, come with me, let us cleave the flood Of carriages, follow me, mind that wheel, Stop, let us stand on this refuge, an island Lost in the torrent of light and mud.
And now, be all ears. Do you hear Those cries, that whirlwind of despair that prowls Around us, wherever the melee is hot, Rises, covers the sky and, abruptly beaten down Over the street, bumps against the windowpanes and floats in shawls Of fog and rain at the pale shop fronts…
What need to suffer again drives out Of their rest and mingles with our fevers the dead? Who knows? in some vague suburban enclosure They were sleeping. Every evening, above the embankments, The city unfurled its mad blue glow. What! to sleep there, near it, at the gates, never again To cross its toll-gates where the roads Come from afar with love to throw themselves all together. They dreamed: what great fire of passion over there Blazes? The dark crowd of the living circulates, The earth beneath our feet throbs under their steps Multiplied… Toward the cries of twilight They have escaped, perhaps. How many times, You, my dead, through the city have I heard your voices!
Gardens where, wandering alone, I breathe your mouth, O vanished one! And you, that shadow that touches me Like a hand upon the shoulder, and gently guides me, O master, is it not your soul in the night?
III
It is an evening, at the hours of fever, when the streets Are hells of cries and surly shoulders That jostle you running fast, God knows where… The city, it capsizes in a mad whirl Of light and dark crowd flowing away.
On the asphalt, the rain is blue, where the day dies, And, beyond the river breezes and the tower, At sunset, so much hope crumbles in the flames!
The air ripples, as in a dream of alcohol; I see double. Stairways, at ground level, Fan me with a muffled din, with smells of stations. The crossroads, I plunge in and swim, in the crush Of cabs. The sidewalks, I dream there, in the halos Of shops, my eyes dazzled and half-closed. An omnibus shakes a bridge. The red reflection Of a gas lamp in the gray water stretches and moves.
And here, I do not know how… yes, it is you, Passing by, dragging your leg near me. It is you, weary faun, among the scrawny trees Of the city, you who, not long ago, upon the marble Of cafes resting your divine languor, Listened, wise and mad, to your heart sing and weep! What do you want? in the night sky, look, your glory Is rising! What do you want? to suffer again and drink Again in your city? and does the abode of the blessed Make you miss the street of vagabonds?
But you flee… in the wind your red scarf floats. Nothing more, but that reflection in the gray water that moves…
Cleared for printing after corrections for two thousand copies of this seventeenth cahier on Tuesday, June 7, 1904.
Manager: CHARLES PÉGUY
This cahier was typeset and printed at the rate of unionized workers.
IMPRIMERIE DE SURESNES (Ed. Grenier, director), 9 rue du Pont.