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THE POET
I remember this evening that Indian drama
The Child Cart, a thief appears in it
Who thinks before making a hole in the wall
What shape the gash should be given
So that beauty does not lose its rights
Even at the moment of a crime
And we would have I believe
At the moment of perishing we poets we men
A concern of the same order in the war where we are
But here as elsewhere I know it beauty
Is most of the time only simplicity
And how many I have seen who dead in the trench
Had remained standing with head bowed
Leaning simply against the parapet
I saw four of them once whom a single shell struck
They remained thus for a long time dead and very plucky
With the leaning aspect of four Pisan towers
For ten days at the bottom of a too narrow corridor
In landslides and mud and cold
Among suffering flesh and in rot
Anxious we guard the road to Tahure
I have more than the three hearts of octopuses to suffer
Your hearts are all in me I feel each wound
O my suffering soldiers O wounded unto death
This night is so beautiful where the bullet coos
A whole river of shells flows over our heads
Sometimes a rocket illuminates the night
It is a flower that opens and then fades away
The earth laments and like a tide
Rises the singing flood in my chalk shelter
Dwelling of uncertain insomnia house
Of Alarm Death and Itching
THE TRENCH
O young men I offer myself to you like a spouse
My love is powerful I love unto death
Crouching at the bottom of the soil I watch you jealous
And my body is entirely but a long kiss that bites
THE BULLETS
From our steel hives let us come out with rapid wingbeats
Bees the booty that bloody turns to honey
The sweet rays of a day that always renews
Come from this exquisite garden humanity
With flowers of intelligence with perfume of beauty
THE POET
Christ then came only in vain among men
If rivers of blood limit kingdoms
And even of Love one knows the cruelty
That is why one must at least think of Beauty
Only thing here below that never is evil
It bears a hundred names in the French language
Grace Virtue Courage Honor and that is
Only the same Beauty
FRANCE
Poet honor her
Concern for Beauty not concern for Glory
But Perfection is it not Victory
THE POET
O poets of times to come O singers
I sing the beauty of all our sorrows
I have grasped some features but you will know much better
How to give a sublime meaning to glorious gestures
And fix the greatness of these pious deaths
One who relaxes his body throwing grenades
Another ardent at shooting feeds the fusillades
Another with dangling arms carries buckets of wine
And the priest-soldier speaks the divine secret
I interpret for all the sweetness of the three notes
That a cannon oriole launches when you sob
Who then will ever know how many times I have wept
My generation over your sacred death
Take my verses O my France Future Multitude
Sing what I sing a pure song the prelude
Of the sacred songs that the beauty of our time
Will know how to inspire in you purer more dazzling
Than those I strive to modulate this evening
In honor of Honor the beauty of Duty
17 December 1915
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-the-starry-head-song-of-honor-guillaume-apollinaire/