Français
Español
Italiano
Deutsch
Português
CHORUS
Unhappy clumsy foreign marauder
Thief thief why did you not ask for those fruits
But since you are hungry and you are in exile
He weeps he is barbarian and good forgive him
THIEF
I confess the theft of the sweet fruits of the ripe fruits
But it is not exile that I come to simulate
And know that I await middling tortures
Unjust if I give back all that I have stolen
OLD MAN
Born of the foam of the seas like Aphrodite
Be docile since you are handsome Castaway
See the sages make you Socratic gestures
You will speak of love when he has eaten
CHORUS
Clumsy and sick foreign marauder
Your father was a sphinx and your mother a night
That charmed with gleams Zacynthos and the Cyclades
Did you feign hunger when you stole the fruits
THIEF
Possessors of ripe fruits what shall I say to the insults
Hear your Ligurian voice in lament o mother
Since they finally had the pubescent girl and the adult
No pretext except to love each other by night
There were fruits all round like souls
And pine-cone almonds strewed
Your sea garden where I left my oars
And my Punic knife at the foot of that peach tree
The lemons the color of oil and with the taste of cold water
Hung among the flowers of the twisted lemon trees
The birds with their beaks have wounded your pomegranates
And almost all the figs were split open
THE ACTOR
He entered the hall with frescoes that depict
Solar and nocturnal incest in the clouds
Sit down there to better hear the Ligurian voices
To the sound of the cinyras of the naked Lydian women
Now the men having masks of theater
And the women having necklaces where hung
The stone taken from the liver of an old Tanagra rooster
Spoke among themselves the language of Chaldea
The languorous west winds outside feigned autumn
The guests were so many couples of lovers
Who said in turn Thief I forgive you
Receive first the salt then the wheat bread
The gruel that grows cold will be bland on your lips
But the goatskin wineskin keeps the white wine cool
By irony do you want them to serve a dish of beans
Or flower fritters dipped in blond honey
A woman said to him You invoke no one
Do you then believe in chance that flows in the hourglass
Thief do you know the laws better despite men
Do you want the happy talisman of my necklace
Thief of fruits turn toward me your lyrical eyes
Fill the hero’s satchel with nuts
He is nobler than the Pythagorean peacock
The dolphin the male viper or the bull
Who then are you who came to us thanks to the Scythian wind
So many have come by road or sea
Lost conquerors who departed too quickly
Columns of winks that fled to the lightning
CHORUS
A stammering man with two jets of flame on his brow
Passed leading a tiny people for the pride
Of eating each day the quails and the manna
And of having seen the sea open like an eye
The bearded water-drawers coiffed with bands
Black and white against evils and spells
Were returning from the Euphrates and the eyes of owls
Sometimes attracted the treasure seekers
This chattering insect o barbarian poet
Was chastely returning at the hour of dying there
To the precious forest with gemmiparous birds
With toads that the azure and the springs matured
A triumph passed groaning under the rainbow
With pale laureled men standing in the chariots
Statues sweating the scurrile the ewe lambs
And the hoarse anguish of peahens and ganders
The widows preceded scattering clusters
The black bishops revering without knowing it
At the isosceles triangle open to the bit of the copes
Pallas and sang the hymn to the beautiful but black one
The horsemen threw us into the future
The alcancies full of ash or of flowers
We will have Florentine kisses without saying so
But in the garden tonight you came wise and thief
Do those of your sect worship an obscene sign
Belphegor the sun silence or the dog
That furtive ardor of serpents that love one another
THE ACTOR
And the thief of fruits cried I am a Christian
CHORUS
Ah! Ah! the necklaces will tinkle the masks will fall
Go away go away against the fire the shadow prevails
Ah! Ah! the thief on the left in the squall
Will laugh at you as horses neigh
WOMAN
Thief of fruits turn toward me your lyrical eyes
Fill the hero’s satchel with nuts
He is nobler than the Pythagorean peacock
The dolphin the male viper or the bull
CHORUS
Ah! Ah! we will shake all night the sistrums
Was the Ligurian voice then a talisman
And if you are not of the right you are sinister
Like a gray stain or the foreboding
Since the absolute falls the fall is a proof
That doubles becomes triple before having been
We will admit that pregnancies move us
Only bellies will be able to deny aseity
See the vases are full of humid moral flowers
Go away but naked since everything is ours
Hear from the chorus of winds the plagal cadences
And take the bow to kill the unicorn or the gnu
The equivocal and tender shadow is the mourning of your flesh
And dark it is human and then ours too
Go away the twilight has light gleams
And then none of us would believe your tales
It shone and attracted like the panther
Why did it not have the voice and the skirts of Orpheus
And the women at night feigning to be heifers
Would have loved him as he was loved since in fact
He was pale he was beautiful like a leprous king
Why did he not have the voice and the skirts of Orpheus
The stone taken from the liver of an old Tanagra rooster
Instead of the sad reed and the funereal burden
Why did he not go to live at the court of the king of Edessa
Thin and magic he would have scanned the firmament
Pale and magic he would have loved poetesses
Just and magic he would have spared the demons
Go away wander credulous and red with your shadow
So be it! the triad is male and you are virgin and cold
Touch is relative but sight is oblong
You have no sign but the sign of the cross
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-thief-guillaume-apollinaire/