To a Female Cat, Poem by Charles Cros

White cat, spotless cat,
I ask you, in these verses,
What secret sleeps in your green eyes,
What sarcasm beneath your whiskers.

You eye us, thinking low
That our pale brows, that our lips
Faded in mad fevers,
That our hollow eyes are not worth

Your muzzle that your nose ends,
Pink as a breast bud,
Your ears whose outline
Proudly crowns your face.

Why this serenity?
Would you have the key to the problems
That make us, shivering and pale,
Pass through spring and summer?

Before death that threatens us,
Cats and people, your scent, more subtle
Than our knowledge, does it tell you
Where goes the beauty that fades,

Where goes thought, where go
The departed carnal splendors?
Cat, turn away your eyes;
I find too much black in their depths.

Charles Cros

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

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