Case d’Armons – The Night of April 1915

Poem by Guillaume Apollinaire Collection CalligrammesThemes WarPeriod 20th century

À L. de C.-C.

The sky is starlit by the Boches’ shells
The marvelous forest where I live holds a ball
The machine gun plays a tune in triplets
But do you have the word
Ah yes the fatal word

To the loopholes To the loopholes Leave the pickaxes there
Like a frantic star seeking its seasons
Heart shell burst you whistled your romance
And your thousand suns have emptied the caissons
May the gods of my eyes fill them in silence
We love you O life and we provoke you

The shells mewed a love to die for
A love that is dying is sweeter than others
Your breath swims in the river where the blood will run dry
The shells mewed
Hear ours singing
Purple love hailed by those about to perish

Spring all soaked the night-light attacks it
It rains my soul it rains but it rains dead eyes
Ulysses how many days to return to Ithaca
Lie down on the straw and dream a fine remorse
That by pure effect of art be aphrodisiac

But organs of the straw’s chaff where you sleep
The hymn of the future is paradisiacal

Guillaume Apollinaire

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

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