Étendards – The Stabbed Dove and the Fountain, Poem by Guillaume Apollinaire

Poem by Guillaume Apollinaire Collection CalligrammesThemes WarPeriod 20th century

Sweet stabbed figures
Dear flowered lips
MIA MAREYE
YETTE LORIE
ANNIE and you MARIE
Where are you O young girls
BUT near a fountain that weeps and prays
this dove is rapt

All the memories of late
O my friends gone to war
Gush toward the firmament
And your gazes in the sleeping water
Die melancholically
Where are they Braque and Max Jacob
Derain with eyes gray as dawn
Where are Raynal Billy Dalize
Whose names grow melancholic
Like footsteps in a church
Where is Cremnitz who enlisted
Perhaps they are dead already
My soul is full of memories
The fountain weeps over my sorrow

THOSE WHO HAVE GONE TO WAR
IN THE NORTH ARE FIGHTING NOW
Evening falls O bloody sea
Gardens where abundantly bleed
the oleander warrior flower

Guillaume Apollinaire

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

Text published on Poésies 123: https://www.poesies123.com/en/poem-etendards-the-stabbed-dove-and-the-fountain-guillaume-apollinaire/