Poem Read at the Wedding of André Salmon

Poem by Guillaume Apollinaire Collection AlcoolsThemes Array, Life, LovePeriod 20th century

July 13, 1909

Seeing flags this morning I did not say to myself
There are the rich garments of the poor
Nor does democratic modesty want to veil its sorrow from me
Nor does liberty held in honor make us now imitate
The leaves O vegetable liberty O only earthly liberty
Nor are houses ablaze because we shall leave never to return
Nor will these agitated hands work tomorrow for us all
Nor have they even hanged those who did not know how to enjoy life
Nor are they even renewing the world by retaking the Bastille
I know that only those grounded in poetry renew it
They decked Paris with flags because my friend André Salmon is marrying there

We met in a cursed cellar
In the days of our youth
Both smoking and poorly dressed awaiting dawn
Smitten smitten with the same words whose meaning must be changed
Deceived deceived poor little ones and not yet knowing how to laugh
The table and the two glasses became a dying man who cast us Orpheus’s last look
The glasses fell and shattered
And we learned to laugh
We then set out as pilgrims of perdition
Through the streets through the lands through reason
I saw him again by the river on which Ophelia floated
Who white still floats among the water lilies
He walked amid the pallid Hamlets
Playing on the flute the airs of madness
I saw him again near a dying muzhik counting the beatitudes
Admiring the snow like naked women
I saw him again doing this or that in honor of the same words
That change the faces of children and I say all these things
Memory and Future because my friend André Salmon is marrying

Let us rejoice not because our friendship was the river that fertilized us
Riverside lands whose abundance is the nourishment all hope for
Nor because our glasses once again cast us the look of dying Orpheus
Nor because we have grown so much that many might confuse our eyes with the stars
Nor because the flags flap at the windows of citizens who have been content for a hundred years to have life and small things to defend
Nor because grounded in poetry we have rights over the words that form and unform the Universe
Nor because we can weep without ridicule and know how to laugh
Nor because we smoke and drink as we once did
Let us rejoice because director of fire and of poets
Love that fills like light
All the solid space between the stars and the planets
Love wills that today my friend André Salmon be married

Guillaume Apollinaire

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