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To André Billy.
Hat in hand he entered right foot first
Into a very chic tailor and supplier to the king
This tradesman had just cut off a few heads
Of mannequins dressed as one ought to dress
The crowd stirred in all directions mingling
Shadows without love dragging along the ground
And hands toward the sky full of lakes of light
Sometimes flew away like white birds
My boat will leave tomorrow for America
And I will never return
With the money kept in the lyric prairies
To guide my blind shadow in these streets I loved
For returning is good for a soldier of the Indies
The stockbrokers have sold all my fine gold spittle
But dressed anew I want to sleep at last
Under trees full of mute birds and monkeys
The mannequins having undressed for him
Beat their clothes then tried them on him
The garment of a lord dead without having paid
At a discount dressed him like a millionaire
Outside the years
Were watching the shop window
The victim mannequins
And passed by in chains
Intercalated in the year were the new days
Fridays bloody and slow with burials
Of whites and all-blacks vanquished by the skies that rain
When the devil’s wife has beaten her lover
Then in an autumn port with indecisive leaves
When the hands of the crowd leafed through there too
On the ship’s deck he set down his suitcase
And sat down
The winds of the Ocean blowing their threats
Left in his hair long wet kisses
Emigrants held out their weary hands toward the port
And others weeping had knelt down
He looked a long time at the shores that died
Only children’s boats trembled on the horizon
A tiny bouquet floating at adventure
Covered the Ocean with an immense flowering
He would have liked that bouquet like glory
To play in other seas among all the dolphins
And in his memory was woven
An endless tapestry
That depicted his story
But to drown changed into lice
These stubborn weavers who ceaselessly question
He married like a doge
To the cries of a modern sirens without spouse
Swell toward the night O Sea The eyes of sharks
Until dawn have watched from afar avidly
Corpses of days gnawed by the stars
Amid the noise of waves and final oaths
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-the-emigrant-from-landor-road-guillaume-apollinaire/