Excuse

Poem by Charles Cros Collection The Sandalwood CasketPeriod 19th century

Trees need a clear sky,
Space, the sun and the air,
The water that bathes their leaves.
The forest needs calm,
Night, the warm and gentle wind
For the nightingale, so it can warble.

You need, in joyful evenings,
Triumph; you need eyes
Dazzled by your proud beauty.
The seeker of the ideal needs
Souls making for him up there
A sympathetic atmosphere.

But when the season is bad,
The tree loses flowers and foliage.
Only its wood remains, black and slender.
And on that stripped tree,
The bird, shivering and wet,
Stays mute, head under its wing.

Thus your splendor, against the background
That envious women make for you,
Loses its nonchalance and its grace.
Among the nobodies, who see only yesterday,
The poet, silenced and proud,
Dreaming of tomorrow’s art, fades away.

Trees, birds, women, dreamers
Lose in mocking circles
Foliage, song, beauty, power.
In the crowd where you take pleasure,
Look at me, look at them,
And you will understand my silence.

Charles Cros

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-excuse-charles-cros/