Banners – At Nîmes

Poem by Guillaume Apollinaire Collection CalligrammesThemes WarPeriod 20th century

To Émile Léonard.

I enlisted under the fairest of skies
In Nice the Navy with the victorious name

Lost among 900 anonymous drivers
I am a cart driver of the new carting of Nîmes

Love says Stay here But over there the shells
Wed ardently and endlessly the goals

I wait for spring to order the intrepid blues
To depart for the glorious north

The 3 servants seated nod their heads
Where their bright eyes shine like my spurs

A fine afternoon on guard at the stable
I hear the artillery trumpets sound

I admire the cheerfulness of this detachment
Going to join at the front our fine regiment

The territorial eats an anchovy salad
While speaking of his sick wife

4 gunners fixed the bubbles of the levels
That stirred like the eyes of horses
The good singer Girault sings to us after 9 o’clock
A grand opera aria you listening to him weep

I stroke with my hand the little gray cannon
Gray as the water of the Seine and I dream of Paris

But this pale wounded man told me at the canteen
Shells in the night the argent splendor

I chew slowly my portion of beef
I walk alone in the evening from 5 to 9

I saddle my horse we beat the countryside
I greet you from afar beautiful rose o Tour Magne

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-banners-at-nimes-guillaume-apollinaire/