Through the Forest of Spontaneities…, Poem by Charles Cros

Poem by Charles Cros Collection The Sandalwood CasketPeriod 19th century

To Madame S. de F.

Through the forest of spontaneities,
Brushing aside the thickets, running through the clearings,
And seeking in the agitation of adventurous thirsts
The forgetting of paradises for a moment left behind,

Restless, hair streaming, eyes troubled,
You go and gather singular plants,
To perfume the insipid air and to hide the stones
Of the earthly prison into which we are cast.

And then, when you have grouped the cut flowers,
You remember the distant ideal,
And their brightness, before that memory, fades.

Then weariness takes hold of you. Your idle hands
Break the pale flowers and throw them to the wind.
And you begin again just so, the following day.

Charles Cros

Translation generated by Poésies 123 with assistance from the deepseek-chat artificial-intelligence model.

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