Banners – 2nd Gunner Driver

Poem by Guillaume Apollinaire Collection CalligrammesThemes WarPeriod 20th century

Here I am free and proud among my companions
Reveille has sounded and in the dawn I salute
The famous Nancy girl whom I never knew

DID YOU KNOW THE WHORE OF NANCY
WHO SCREWED THE VXXXXX OUT OF ALL THE ARTILLERY
THE ARTILLERY didn’t notice
that it had a pain in its …

The 3 servants arm in arm fell asleep on the limber
And as driver over hill and dale on the gun carriage
At a walk at a trot or at a gallop I drive the cannon
The officer’s arm is my polestar
It’s raining my coat is soaked and sometimes I wipe my face
With the towel-rag that’s in the sergeant’s saddlebag
Here are infantrymen with heavy steps and muddy feet
The rain pricks them with its needles the pack follows them

HOLY NAME OF GOD WHAT A SIGHT
NAME OF GOD WHAT A SIGHT
MEANWHILE AS NIGHT DESCENDS

HAIL WORLD OF WHICH I AM THE ELOQUENT TONGUE THAT ITS MOUTH O PARIS
FIRES AND WILL ALWAYS FIRE AT THE GERMANS
Infantrymen
Walking clods of earth
You are the power
Of the soil that made you
And it’s the soil that goes
When you advance
An officer rides by at a gallop
Like a blue angel in the gray rain
A wounded man walks along smoking a pipe
The hare scampers off and here’s a stream I love
And this young woman greets us carters
Victory stands behind our chin straps
And calculates for our cannons the angular measures
Our volleys our bursts of fire are her cries of joy
Her flowers are our shells with marvelous sheaves
Her thought withdraws to the glorious trenches

I HEAR THE BIRD SING
THE BEAUTIFUL BIRD OF PREY

Guillaume Apollinaire

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

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