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A rooster crows I dream and the leafy branches shake
Their leaves that look like poor sailors
Winged and whirling like Icarus the false
The blind gesticulating like ants
Gazed at themselves in the rain on the sidewalk’s reflections
Their laughter gathered in bunches of grapes
Don’t leave my house anymore diamond that spoke
Sleep gently you are at home everything belongs to you
My bed my lamp and my pierced helmet
Precious glances sapphires cut near Saint-Claude
The days were a pure emerald
I remember you city of meteors
They bloomed in the air during those nights when nothing sleeps
Gardens of light where I picked bouquets
You must be tired of frightening that sky
Let it keep its hiccup
One can hardly imagine
How much success makes people stupid and calm
At the institute for the young blind they asked
Don’t you have a winged young blind man
O mouths man is in search of a new language
To which the grammarian of no language will have anything to say
And these old languages are so close to dying
That it is truly out of habit and lack of daring
That they are still made to serve poetry
But they are like sick people without will
My goodness people would quickly get used to muteness
Mimicry is quite enough for cinema
But let us stubbornly speak
Let us move the tongue
Let us sputter
We want new sounds new sounds new sounds
We want consonants without vowels
Consonants that fart dully
Imitate the sound of the spinning top
Let a nasal and continuous sound sparkle
Click your tongue
Use the dull noise of one who eats without civility
The aspirated scraping of spitting would also make a beautiful consonant
The various labial farts would also make your speech blaring
Get used to burping at will
And what letter solemn as a bell’s sound
Through our memories
We do not love enough the joy
Of seeing beautiful new things
O my friend hurry
Fear that one day a train may move you
More
Look at it more quickly for yourself
These railways that circulate
Will soon leave life
They will be beautiful and ridiculous
Two lamps burn before me
Like two women laughing
I bow my head sadly
Before the ardent mockery
This laughter spreads
Everywhere
Speak with your hands snap your fingers
Hit your cheek as if it were a drum
O words
They follow in the myrtle grove
Eros and Anteros in tears
I am the sky of the city
Listen to the sea
The sea moaning in the distance and crying all alone
My voice faithful as the shadow
Wants at last to be the shadow of life
Wants to be o living sea unfaithful like you
The sea that has betrayed countless sailors
Swallows my great cries like drowned gods
And the sea in the sun can bear only the shadow
That birds cast with wings spread
The word is sudden and it is a God who trembles
Come forward and support me I miss the hands
Of those who held them out and adored me together
What oasis of arms will welcome me tomorrow
Do you know this joy of seeing new things
O voice I speak the language of the sea
And in the port at night of the last taverns
I who am more stubborn than not the hydra of Lerna
The street where my two hands swim
With subtle fingers rummaging through the city
Goes away but who knows if tomorrow
The street might become motionless
Who knows where my path would be
Think that the railways
Will be outmoded and abandoned in a short time
Look
Victory above all will be
To see well in the distance
To see everything
Up close
And that everything has a new name
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-victory-guillaume-apollinaire/