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To Etienne Carjat
Young girl of the cheap dance hall,
From what country did you come
To display your naked breast
To the eyes of the idiotic public?
Young girl of the cheap dance hall,
In the village it displeased you
To see bruised, in the fair age
Your dainty foot by a wooden shoe.
Young girl of the cheap dance hall,
You could not endure Nicaise
Nor the ducks that, still silly,
You led to dabble in the water.
Young girl of the cheap dance hall,
Do you no longer think of your mother,
Of the plow, of your thatched cottage?…
You do not laugh at that picture.
Young girl of the cheap dance hall,
You prefer to the plow
To listen to the noises of the street
And to pour us absinthe in streams.
Young girl of the cheap dance hall,
Your ruddy look was foolish,
I like you better thus, palish,
Your eyes ringed with a blue halo.
Young girl of the cheap dance hall,
Says a sermonizer who blames you for it,
You adorn your body more than your soul,
Toward hell you run at a gallop.
Young girl of the cheap dance hall,
What to say to this man who pleads
That one must, to live well, be ugly,
Scrub and go to bed early?
Young girl of the cheap dance hall,
Let them cry out and continue
To charm with your naked breast
The eyes of the idiotic public.
Charles Cros
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-vocation-charles-cros/