Insomnia, poem by Charles Cros

To Eugène Zerlaut

Here is the ridiculous morning
That comes to discolor the night,
Awakening with its twilight
Sorrow, intrigue and noise.

Neat, the zinc and the slates
Of the roofs cut the normal sky,
People sleep, in the bourgeois houses.
I am not sleeping. What is my ailment?

Is it a former life
That pursues me with its perfumes?
These people will swarm in a moment,
Scattering my departed dreams.

I remember! they were brothers
Whom, beloved chief, I led
Across the vast heather,
The hawthorns, the brooms.

Oh! what an exquisite beloved
With a sweet heart, with velvet eyes! …
Another land was conquered
Where the sun always shone.

The gold from which embroideries were made,
The gems, crystals of sunsets,
The flowers, unnerving enchantments,
The aromatics filling the fields

Intoxicated me. I put on rings,
And pearls in my hair.
The dancing girls with vague eyes
Distracted me from my first vows.
*

To the mounts where the sun sets
Carried off by strangers,
I wept, mute and fierce,
All my raptures changed,

The scents into insipid grasses,
The diamonds into cold crystal,
The superb tigers into gray wolves,
The sandalwood into banal fir.

Then, poorly consoled, under the branches,
I spied in the cold valleys
The girls who passed so white,
So grave, under their blond hair.

But it was not the forgotten one
With lips red with betel
Once bound to my life!…
How I suffer from being immortal!

Neat, the zinc and the slates
Of the roofs cut the normal sky,
People awake in the bourgeois houses,
I believe that I am dying of my ailment.

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-insomnia-charles-cros/