Waves – The Hills

Poem by Guillaume Apollinaire Collection CalligrammesPeriod 20th century

Above Paris one day
Two great airplanes fought
One was red and the other black
While at the zenith blazed
The eternal solar plane

One was all my youth
And the other was the future
They fought each other with rage
As did against Lucifer
The Archangel with radiant wings

Thus calculation against the problem
Thus night against day
Thus attacks what I love
My love thus the hurricane
Uproots the tree that cries

But see what gentleness everywhere
Paris like a young girl
Awakens languorously
Shakes her long hair
And sings her beautiful song

Where then has my youth fallen
You see that the future blazes
Know that I speak today
To announce to the whole world
That at last the art of predicting is born

Certain men are hills
That rise from among men
And see in the distance all the future
Better than if it were the present
Clearer than if it were the past

Ornament of times and roads
Pass and endure without stopping
Let the serpents hiss
In vain against the south wind
The Psylli and the wave have perished

Order of times if machines
Should finally take to thinking
On the beaches of gemstones
Waves of gold would break
The foam would be mother again

Lower than man go the eagles
It is he who makes the joy of the seas
As he dispels in the air
Shadow and vertiginous spleen
Through which the spirit rejoins the dream

Here is the time of magic
It returns await
Billions of prodigies
That have given birth to no fable
No one having imagined them

Depths of consciousness
You will be explored tomorrow
And who knows what living beings
Will be drawn from these abysses
With entire universes

Here prophets arise
Like distant blue hills
They will know precise things
As scientists believe they know
And will transport us everywhere

The great force is desire
And come that I may kiss your forehead
O light as a flame
Of which you have all the suffering
All the ardor and all the brilliance

The age is coming when it will be studied
All that it is to suffer
It will not be courage
Nor even renunciation
Nor all that we can do

We will seek in man himself
Much more than we have sought there
We will scrutinize his will
And what force will be born from it
Without machine and without instrument

The helpful spirits wander
Interpenetrating among us
Since the times that join us
Nothing ends there nothing begins there
Look at the ring on your finger

Time of deserts of crossroads
Time of squares and hills
I come here to perform tricks
Where a talisman plays its role
Dead and more subtle than life

I have finally detached myself
From all natural things
I can die but not sin
And what no one has ever touched
I have touched it I have felt it

And I have scrutinized all that no one
Can in any way imagine
And I have weighed many times
Even imponderable life
I can die smiling

Very often I have soared so high
So high that farewell to all things
Strangenesses phantoms
And I no longer wish to admire
This boy who mimics dread

Youth farewell jasmine of time
I have breathed your fresh perfume
In Rome on flowered chariots
Laden with masks and garlands
And the little bells of carnival

Farewell youth white Christmas
When life was but a star
Whose reflection I contemplated
In the Mediterranean Sea
More pearly than meteors
Downy as a nest of archangels
Or the garland of clouds
And more lustrous than halos
Emanations and splendors
Unique sweetness harmonies

I stop to look
On the incandescent lawn
A serpent wanders it is myself
Who am the flute I play
And the whip that chastises others

A time comes for suffering
A time comes for goodness
Youth farewell here is the time
When we will know the future
Without dying of its knowledge

It is the time of ardent grace
The will alone will act
Seven years of incredible trials
Man will deify himself
Purer more vivid and more learned

He will discover other worlds
The spirit languishes like flowers
From which are born savory fruits
That we will watch ripen
On the sunlit hill

I say what life truly is
Alone I could sing thus
My songs fall like seeds
Be silent all you who sing
Do not mix the tares with the wheat

A vessel came into the port
A great ship decked with flags
But we found no one there
Only a beautiful and vermilion woman
She lay there murdered

Another time I begged
They gave me only a flame
With which I was burned to the lips
And I could not say thank you
Torch that nothing can extinguish

Where then are you my friend
Who withdrew so well into yourself
That only an abyss remained
Into which I threw myself
To the colorless depths

And I hear my steps returning
Along the paths that no one
Has trodden I hear my steps
At every hour they pass over there
Slow or hurried they go or come

Winters you who shave
It snows and I am unhappy
I have crossed the splendid sky
Where life is music
The ground is too white for my eyes

Accustom yourselves as I have
To these prodigies I announce
To the goodness that will reign
To the suffering that I endure
And you will know the future
It is from suffering and goodness
That beauty will be made
More perfect than was that
Which came from proportions
It snows and I burn and I tremble

Now I am at my table
I write what I have felt
And what I sang up there
A slender tree that is swayed
By the wind whose hair flies away

A top hat is on
A table laden with fruits
The gloves are dead near an apple
A lady twists her neck
Beside a gentleman who swallows himself

The ball spins in the depths of time
I have killed the handsome conductor
And I peel for my friends
The orange whose flavor is
A marvelous fireworks display

All are dead the butler
Pours them an unreal champagne
That foams like a snail
Or like a poet’s brain
While a rose was singing

The slave holds a naked sword
Like springs and rivers
And each time it lowers
A universe is ripped open
From which new worlds emerge

The driver sits at the wheel
And each time that on the road
He honks passing the bend
There appears as far as the eye can see
A universe still virgin

And the third number is the lady
She goes up in the elevator
She goes up up always
And the light unfolds
And these brightnesses transfigure her

But these are little secrets
There are others more profound
That will soon be revealed
And will make of you a hundred pieces
Of always single thought

But weep weep and let us weep again
And whether the moon be full
Or whether it has but a crescent
Ah! weep weep and let us weep again
We have laughed so much in the sun

Golden arms support life
Penetrate the golden secret
All is but a swift flame
Flowered by the adorable rose
And from which rises an exquisite perfume

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-waves-the-hills-guillaume-apollinaire/