by Paul Valéry
De mille et mille idoles du soleil,
Hydre absolue, ivre de ta chair bleue,
Qui te remords l’étincelante queue
Dans un tumulte au silence pareil,
Le vent se lève! … Il faut tenter de vivre!
L’air immense ouvre et referme mon livre,
La vague en poudre ose jaillir des rocs!
Envolez-vous, pages tout éblouies!
Rompez, vagues! Rompez d’eaux réjouies
Ce toit tranquille où picoraient des focs!
THE CEMETERY BY THE SEA
Mή, ϕίλα ψυχά, βίον ἀυάνατον
σπɛῦδɛ, τὰν δ’ ἔμπϱαϰτον ἄντλɛι μαχανάν.
PINDAR, PYTHIAN ODE 3
This peaceful roof of milling doves
Shimmers between the pines, between the tombs;
Judicious noon composes there, with fire,
The sea, the ever-recommencing sea …
O what reward, after a thought,
Is a long look across the calm of the gods!
What subtle flashes, finely wrought, consume
So many fleeting diamonds of foam,
And what a perfect peace is taking form!
Under a sun that pauses at the brink,
Pure workmanship of an eternal cause,
Time glitters, Dreams are knowledge.
Stable treasure, Minerva’s simple shrine,
Great mass of calm and manifest reserve,
Disdainful water, Eye that holds
Within you, veiled by flame, such depths of sleep,
O my silence … Roof, both edifice in the soul
And golden summit of a thousand tiles!
Temple to Time contained in a single sigh,
To this pure point I climb and find my breath,
Surrounded by my seaward gaze;
And as my greatest offering to the gods,
The calm and glittering brightness sows
Across the heights a masterful disdain.
As fruit dissolves in consummation,
As it transforms its absence to delight
When in a mouth its form is lost and dies,
I breathe the smoke I will become
And the sky sings, of shores transformed
To rumor, to the soul that is consumed.
Brilliant sky, true sky, it is I
Who change! After such pride, after such strange
Indolence, and yet suffused with power,
I surrender to this shining air,
My shadow sweeps the houses of the dead
And with its fragile motion leads me on.
My soul left open to the solstice fires,
I hold your lancing, your unsparing gaze,
O striking justice of the light!
Pure, I return you to your rightful place:
Look at yourself … But to return the light
Is to leave the other half in lifeless shadow.
For me alone, in me, and mine alone,
Close to the heart, the wellsprings of the poem,
Between the chasm and the pure event,
I wait to hear that dark and bitter well,
My inner greatness, echoing in my soul
Its ever-future emptiness!
Do you know, feigned captive of the branches, gulf
That eats away these slender iron grates,
Bedazzling secrets on my eyes, even closed,
What body drags me to its idle end,
What forehead draws me to this earth of bones?
A spark there thinks of my departed ones.
Closed and sacred, filled with a weightless fire,
Fragment of earth offered up to the light,
This place is pleasing, overspread by flames,
Composed of gold, dark trees and stone, where so
Much marble trembles on so many shadows,
The faithful sea asleep across my tombs!
Splendid dog, drive off the idolater!
When with a shepherd’s smile, slow and alone,
I put to pasture this mysterious herd
Of white-fleeced sheep, my peaceful tombs,
Keep far from them the prudent doves,
The empty dreams, the curious angels!
The future, seen from here, is idleness.
The keening insect scratches at the dryness;
Everything’s burned, undone, and taken up
To some unsparing essence in the air …
Drunk on absence, life is vast,
Bitterness sweet, and the mind clear.
The dead are well here, hidden in this earth
That keeps them warm, dries out their mystery.
High Noon above, unstirring Noon
Conceives itself, and satisfies itself …
Whole head and perfect circling crown,
I am the secret change in you.
There’s no one else but me to hold your fears!
My doubt, my limits, my remorse,
Are your great diamond’s fatal flaw …
But in their marble-heavy night
A formless people at the roots of the trees
Has slowly taken up your cause.
They dissipated in a heavy absence,
The red clay drank the whiteness of their kind,
Their gift for life flowed out into the flowers!
Where are the kindly phrases of the dead,
The individual art, the singular souls?
Now larvae spin where tears once formed.
The piercing cries of tickled girls,
The lashes, the teeth, the moistened eyes,
The charming breast that plays with fire,
The yielding lips suffused with blood,
The final gifts, the hands withholding them
All go into the earth, and back in play!
And you, great soul, are you waiting for a dream
That will be truer than these lying colors
Created by surf and gold for eyes of flesh?
So will you sing, when you are light as air?
All flies! Life washes through my presence,
Saintly impatience also dies!
Lean consolation, immortality
Grotesquely laureled, bound in black and gold,
That changes death into a mother’s breast,
The pious ruse and the fine lie:
Who does not know, and who does not refuse
That empty skull, and that eternal laughter?
Deep fathers, uninhabited heads,
Who are the earth and mingle all our steps
Under the weight of so much shoveled dirt,
What truly gnaws, the irrefutable worm,
Is not for you asleep beneath the slab:
It lives on life, and will not let me be!
Could it be love, or hatred for myself?
It comes so near me with its secret tooth
That any other name would do as well!
What difference! It sees, it wants, it dreams, it touches!
It loves my flesh, and even in my bed
I only live to feed that living being …
Zeno, cruel Zeno, Zeno of Elea,
So did you pierce me with your feathered arrow
That quivers, flies and does not fly?
The sound engenders me, the arrow kills!
Ah, sun … A tortoise shadow for the soul,
Achilles striding motionless along.
No! … On your feet, return to passing time!
My body, break this pensive form!
My breast, drink in the birth of the wind!
A breath of freshness coming off the sea
Gives me my soul back … O great salt power,
Let’s run to the waves, to reemerge alive!
Yes, great sea, gifted with feverish dreams,
Panther skin and antique chlamys pierced
By a thousand flashing idols of the sun,
Pure Hydra drunk upon your own blue fles
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Who in a roar that is at one with silence
Over and over catch your glittering tail,
The wind is rising … We must try to live!
The vast air opens then shuts again my book,
The waves dare surge in spray above the rocks!
Scatter, pages dazzled by the light,
Break, waves! Exulting waters, break
This peaceful roof where sailboats dipped like doves!
_____________
Mή, ϕίλα ψυχά …: “Do not, O my soul, aspire to immortal life, but exhaust what is possible.”
ODE SECRÈTE
Chute superbe, fin si douce,
Oubli des luttes, quel délice
Que d’étendre à même la mousse
Après la danse, le corps lisse!
Jamais une telle lueur
Que ces étincelles d’été
Sur un front semé de sueur
N’avait la victoire fêté!
Mais touché par le Crépuscule,
Ce grand corps qui fit tant de choses,
Qui dansait, qui rompit Hercule,
N’est plus qu’une masse de roses!
Dormez, sous les pas sidéraux,
Vainqueur lentement désuni,
Car l’Hydre inhérente au héros
S’est éployée à l’infini …
Ô quel Taureau, quel Chien, quelle Ourse,
Quels objets de victoire énorme,
Quand elle entre aux temps sans ressource
L’âme impose à l’espace informe!
Fin suprême, étincellement
Qui, par les monstres et les dieux,
Proclame universellement
Les grands actes qui sont aux Cieux!
SECRET ODE
The fall so splendid, the end sweet,
The struggle forgotten, what bliss
To stretch the glistening body out
Against the moss, after the dance!
Never has such a glow
Shone out in victory
As these bright sparks of summer
Across a forehead sown with sweat!
But touched at last by the Dusk’s light,
This body that achieved so much,
That danced, that bested Hercules,
Dissolves among the clumps of roses!
So sleep, beneath sidereal steps,
Conqueror slowly come undone,
For now the Hydra in the hero
Unfurls its endless rows of heads …
Behold what Dog, what Bull, what Bear,
What signs of sweeping victory,
The soul imposes, entering time
Without resort, on formless space!
Supreme end, sparkling light
That by these monsters and these gods
Universally proclaim
The glorious acts that are in the Skies!
LE RAMEUR
À ANDRÉ LEBEY
Penché contre un grand fleuve, infiniment mes rames
M’arrachent à regret aux riants environs ;
me aux pesantes mains, pleines des avirons,
Il faut que le ciel cède au glas des lentes lames.
Le cœur dur, l’œil distrait des beautés que je bats,
Laissant autour de moi mûrir des cercles d’onde,
Je veux à larges coups rompre l’illustre monde
De feuilles et de feu que je chante tout bas.
Arbres sur qui je passe, ample et naïve moire,
Eau de ramages peinte, et paix de l’accompli,
Déchire-les, ma barque, impose-leur un pli
Qui coure du grand calme abolir la mémoire.
Jamais, charmes du jour, jamais vos grâces n’ont
Tant souffert d’un rebelle essayant sa défense :
Mais, comme les soleils m’ont tiré de l’enfance,
Je remonte à la source où cesse même un nom.
En vain, toute la nymphe énorme et continue
Empêche de bras purs mes membres harassés ;
Je romprai lentement mille liens glacés
Et les barbes d’argent de sa puissance nue.
Ce bruit secret des eaux, ce fleuve étrangement
Place mes jours dorés sous un bandeau de soie ;
Rien plus aveuglément n’use l’antique joie
Qu’un bruit de fuite égale et de nul changement.
Sous les ponts annelés, l’eau profonde me porte,
Voûtes pleines de vent, de murmure et de nuit,
Ils courent sur un front qu’ils écrasent d’ennui,
Mais dont l’os orgueilleux est plus dur que leur porte.
Leur nuit passe longtemps. L’âme baisse sous eux
Ses sensibles soleils et ses promptes paupières,
Quand, par le mouvement qui me revêt de pierres,
Je m’enfonce au mépris de tant d’azur oiseux.
THE ROWER
FOR ANDRÉ LEBEY
Leaning into the river, endlessly my rowing
Tears me reluctant from the laughing banks;
Soul with heavy hands, holding the oars,
The sky must yield to the knell of these slow blades.
Hard heart, eye heedless to the beauties I beat,
Leaving around me rings to ripen on the water,
I strike with hearty blows the splendid world
Of leaves and fire sung softly to myself.
Trees I pass over, naively dappled silk,
Water painted with boughs, fulfillment and peace,
Disturb them, little boat, impose a crease that runs
Across their calm, erasing its memory.
Charms of the day, your graces never endured
So much from one rebel in his own defense:
But led from childhood by those suns, I go
To find the spring where even names are lost.
The nymph, enormous and unbroken, strives in vain
To block my harried limbs with her pure arms:
I’ll slowly break a thousand icy ties,
The beards of silver of her naked power.
This flow, this secret sound of water, strangely
Lays over my golden days a veil of silk;
Nothing wears down more blindly ancient joy
Than the sound of even, changeless draining away.
I am borne through bridges’ rings by the deep water,
Vaults filled with wind, with murmurs and with night,
That pass with crushing weariness across
A brow whose lofty bone is harder than their gate.
Their night lasts long. The soul, beneath them, lowers
Its eager eyelids and its sensitive suns
When, with an act encasing me in stone, I plunge
Into the dark, and spurn the sterile azure.
PALME
À JEANNIE
De sa grâce redoutable
Voilant à peine l’éclat,
Un ange met sur ma table
Le pain tendre, le lait plat ;
Il me fait de la paupière
Le signe d’une prière
Qui parle à ma vision :
—Calme, calme, reste calme!
Connais le poids d’une palme
Portant sa profusion!
Pour autant qu’elle se plie
À l’abondance des biens,
Sa figure est accomplie,
Ses fruits lourds sont ses liens.
Admire comme elle vibre,
Et comme une lente fibre
Qui divise le moment,
Départage sans mystère
L’attirance de la terre
Et le poids du firmament!
Ce bel arbitre mobile
Entre l’ombre et le soleil,
Simule d’une sibylle
La sagesse et le sommeil.
Autour d’une même place
L’ample palme ne se lasse
Des appels ni des adieux …
Qu’elle est noble, qu’elle est tendre!
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Qu’elle est digne de s’attendre
À la seule main des dieux!
L’or léger qu’elle murmure
Sonne au simple doigt de l’air,
Et d’une soyeuse armure
Charge l’âme du désert.
Une voix impérissable
Qu’elle rend au vent de sable
Qui l’arrose de ses grains,
À soi-même sert d’oracle,
Et se flatte du miracle
Que se chantent les chagrins.
Cependant qu’elle s’ignore
Entre le sable et le ciel,
Chaque jour qui luit encore
Lui compose un peu de miel.
Sa douceur est mesurée
Par la divine durée
Qui ne compte pas les jours,
Mais bien qui les dissimule
Dans un suc où s’accumule
Tout l’arôme des amours.
Parfois si l’on désespère,
Si l’adorable rigueur
Malgré tes larmes n’opère
Que sous ombre de langueur,
N’accuse pas d’être avare
Une Sage qui prépare
Tant d’or et d’autorité :
Par la sève solennelle
Une espérance éternelle
Monte à la maturité!
Ces jours qui te semblent vides
Et perdus pour l’univers
Ont des racines avides
Qui travaillent les déserts.
La substance chevelue
Par les ténèbres élue
Ne peut s’arrêter jamais
Jusqu’aux entrailles du monde,
De poursuivre l’eau profonde
Que demandent les sommets.
Patience, patience,
Patience dans l’azur!
Chaque atome de silence
Est la chance d’un fruit mûr!
Viendra l’heureuse surprise :
Une colombe, la brise,
L’ébranlement le plus doux,
Une femme qui s’appuie,
Feront tomber cette pluie
Où l’on se jette à genoux!
Qu’un peuple à présent s’écroule,
Palme! … irrésistiblement!
Dans la poudre qu’il se roule
Sur les fruits du firmament!
Tu n’as pas perdu ces heures
Si légère tu demeures
Après ces beaux abandons ;
Pareille à celui qui pense
Et dont l’âme se dépense
À s’accroître de ses dons!
PALM
FOR JEANNIE
Scarcely veiling the blaze
Of his awe-inspiring grace,
An angel sets on my table
The warm bread, the still milk.
