At the Café, Poem by Charles Cros

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

The dream is not to dine,
But to drink, talk, banter
When night falls;
Draining the aperitifs,
We laugh at the cypresses and yews
Shading the grave.

And everyone is always right
About everything, while at home
The soup steams,
We forget, in triumphant words,
The fresh laughter of the children
That perfumes us.

We pass through, a vague scattering,
Friends and enemies
Whom we avoid.
Better to play dice,
For words are devices
From which one dies quickly.

These café people, who are they?
In the subtle quarter-hours I have
Found things
That they will never understand.
And, disdainful, I adorn my brow
With roses.

Charles Cros

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

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