Many of These Gods Have Perished

Poem by Guillaume Apollinaire Collection AlcoolsThemes ReligionPeriod 20th century

Many of these gods have perished
It is for them the willows weep
The great Pan love Jesus Christ
Are truly dead and the cats meow
In the courtyard I weep in Paris

I who know lays for queens
The complaints of my years
Hymns of a slave to the morays
The romance of the unloved
And songs for the sirens

Love is dead I tremble at it
I adore beautiful idols
The memories resembling him
Like the wife of Mausoleus
I remain faithful and mournful

I am faithful as a mastiff
To its master ivy to the trunk
And the Zaporozhian Cossacks
Pious drunkards and thieves
To the steppes and the Decalogue

Wear like a yoke the Crescent
That astrologers question
I am the all-powerful Sultan
O my Zaporozhian Cossacks
Your dazzling Lord

Become my faithful subjects
The Sultan had written to them
They laughed at this news
And answered instantly
By the light of a candle

Guillaume Apollinaire

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

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