Indignation

Poem by Charles Cros Collection The Collar of ClawsPeriod 19th century

I would have gladly lived as a gentle hermit,
Living on a radish and running water.
But art is so long and time is so short!
I dream of daggers, poisons, dynamite.

To have a chalet of pine wood!
I have beautiful children (the future), their mother
Loves me well, despite this bitter thought
That I cannot earn our bread.

The new world sees me at its head.
If I were English, Chinese, German,
Or Russian, oh! then we would see how
France would play the coquette for me.

I have dreamed everything, said everything, in my country
I have played with fire, air, the lyre.
People could hear me, people could read me
And folks go off to sleep, amazed…

I have ten thousand friends. They all have incomes.
How many enemies?… I do not count.
They would like to have me at the end of meals,
For cigars, for intoxicating liqueurs.

Then I would go trampling the carpet
In the warm stairway, before the fishmonger;
Walking in the mud, or in the dust,
I would return home on foot.

Weary of being treated like the Helots,
I am going to leave far from you, thinking
That I cannot, without a lot of money,
Wear out so many boots against so many backsides.

Charles Cros

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

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