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To Fernand Fleuret
Open this door for me where I knock weeping
Life is as changeable as the Euripus
You watched a bank of clouds descend
With the orphan steamer toward future fevers
And all these regrets all these repentances
Do you remember
Waves arched fish submarine flowers
One night it was the sea
And the rivers poured into it
I remember it I remember it still
One evening I went down into a sad inn
Near Luxembourg
At the back of the room a Christ was flying away
Someone had a ferret
Another a hedgehog
They were playing cards
And you had forgotten me
Do you remember the long orphanage of stations
We crossed cities that all day turned
And vomited at night the sun of the days
O sailors o dark women and you my companions
Remember it
Two sailors who had never left each other
Two sailors who had never spoken to each other
The younger one dying fell on his side
O you dear companions
Electric bells of stations song of reapers
Butcher’s sleigh regiment of countless streets
Cavalry of bridges livid nights of alcohol
The cities I saw lived like madwomen
Do you remember the suburbs and the plaintive herd of landscapes
The cypresses cast their shadows under the moon
I listened that night at the decline of summer
A languorous bird and always irritated
And the eternal sound of a broad dark river
But while dying they rolled toward the estuary
All the gazes all the gazes of all the eyes
The banks were deserted grassy silent
And the mountain on the other shore was very clear
Then without noise without anything living being seen
Against the mount passed tenacious shadows
In profile or suddenly turning their vague faces
And holding the shadow of their lances forward
The shadows against the perpendicular mount
Grew or sometimes suddenly lowered
And these bearded shadows wept humanly
Sliding step by step on the clear mountain
Who then do you recognize in these old photographs
Do you remember the day an old bee fell into the fire
It was you remember at the end of summer
Two sailors who had never left each other
The elder wore an iron chain around his neck
The younger braided his blond hair
Open this door for me where I knock weeping
Life is as changeable as the Euripus
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-traveler-guillaume-apollinaire/