The Song Of The Poorly-Loved

for Paul Léautaud


So I sang this ballad
In 1903 not knowing
If my love resembled
A lovely Phoenix dying at evening
Morning will see it rise again

One misty London evening
Some hoodlum who resembled
My love came up to me
And shot me such a glance
I lowered my eyes in shame

I followed this punk who was
Whistling his hands in his pockets
Between houses that appeared like
The Red Sea’s parted waters
I was Pharaoh he the Hebrews

May these waves of bricks crash down
If you were not dearly loved
I am the lord of Egypt
His sister-queen his army
If you are not my only love

At a street corner set ablaze
With lamplight from every window
Wounds in the bloody fog
Where the windows were lamenting
Was a woman who looked like her

The same heartless gaze
And scar across her bare throat
She staggered smashed from a bar
It was then I recognized
Love’s falsehood

When wise Ulysses at last
Found his way to his homeland
His aged dog remembered him
And by a finely woven cloth
His wife awaited his return

Shakuntula’s royal spouse
Weary of conquests rejoiced
When he returned to find her
Wasted from waiting misty-eyed
Stroking her male gazelle

I thought of these happy kings
When this false beloved and she
I was in love with still
Collided shadow to shadow
Rendering me so unhappy

Hell’s built on such regrets o
If only the skies would obliterate my vows
For her kiss the kings of this world
Would die the destitute renowned
Would sell their shadows for her

I’ve wintered inside my past
Come again Easter sun
And thaw a heart more icy
Than the forty of Sebaste
Who weren’t martyred as much as my life

O memory my fair ship
Have we sailed far enough
Across these bitter waters
Have we strayed far enough
From lovely dawn toward cheerless evening

Farewell false love I mistook
For the woman who’s gone away
For the one I lost
In Germany last year
The one I will see no more

Milky way o shining sister
Of Canaan’s white rivers
And lovers’ white bodies
We dead swimmers shall follow
Your course toward other nebulas

I recall another year
An April morning at dawn
I sang my beloved joy
A love song in a manly voice
In love’s own season


AUBADE
SUNG AT LÆTARE ONE YEAR AGO

It’s spring come little Daisy
And stroll the fair woodlands
Hens cackle in the barnyard
Dawn fills the sky with rosy folds
Love comes forth to win thee

Mars and Venus have returned
Their lips maddened they’re embracing
In the midst of innocent places
Where beneath the leafening roses
Fair rosy gods dance naked

Come sweetness you’re the queen
Of this blossoming
Nature’s lovely and touching
Pan’s whistling throughout the forest
And damp frogs are singing

Most of these gods have perished
The willows are weeping for them
Great Pan      Love      Jesus Christ
Are all dead the tomcats are howling
In the yard I’m weeping in Paris

I who know lays made for queens
The sad strains of my days
Hymns slaves made to the moray
The ballad of the poorly-loved
And songs for the sirens

Love’s dead I’m trembling for it
I adore these lovely idols
Memories that resemble her
And like Mausolus’ wife
I remain faithful and grieving

I’m faithful as a mastiff
To its master as ivy to the bough
And as the Zaprogian Cossacks
Those pious drunks and thieves
To the steppes and the ten commandments

Bear like a yoke this Crescent
Which the astrologers consult
I am omnipotent Sultan
O Zaprogian Cossacks
I am your dazzling Overlord

Become my faithful subjects
The Sultan wrote to them
They laughed at this bit of news
And wrote a response right away
By the light of a candle

RESPONSE OF THE ZAPROGIAN COSSACKS
TO THE SULTAN OF CONSTANTINOPLE

Bigger crook than Barrabas
Horned like the rebel angels
What sort of Beelzebub are you
Reared on filth and muck
We won’t show up for your sabbaths

Rotten fish of Salonika
Long necklace of nightmares about
Eyes ripped out in a fit of spite
Your mother let a wet fart
And you were born in her colic

Butcher of Podolia Lover of
Sores and ulcers and scabs
Pig’s snout horse’s ass
Better hang onto your riches
To pay for your medication

Milky way o shining sister
Of Canaan’s white rivers
And lovers’ white bodies
We dead swimmers shall follow
Your course toward other nebulas

Remorseful as a whore’s eyes
And gorgeous as a panther
Love your Florentine kisses
Leave a bitter taste
Disheartening our fates

Her gaze leaves behind a train
Of stars through trembling evenings
Sirens swim in her eyes
And our furious bloody kisses
Make our fairy godmothers cry

But really I’m waiting for her
With my heart and my soul
And if that women ever returns
On the bridge of Come-Back-to-me
I’ll say to her I am content

My heart and my head are empty
All the heavens flow through them
Such sieves of the Danaïdes
How can one become happy
As a innocent little child

I wish to never forget her
My dove my white lagoon
My daisy stripped of petals
My far off isle my Désirade
My rose my tree of cloves

Satyrs and pyraustas
Aegipans and will-o-the-wisps
And cursed or faustly fates
A noose around the neck as at Calais
What a holocaust for my grief

Grief that doubles fates
Unicorn and capricorn
My soul and my indistinct body
Flee from you divine butcher
Adorned with stars and morning’s blossoms

Pale god Misery with ivory eyes
Have your crazy priests appareled you
Have your black robed victims
Wept in vain
Misery’s a god not to be trusted

And you who crawl behind me
God of my gods that died in autumn
How much earth have you surveyed
For my body’s rightful place
My shadow o my old serpent

I led you beloved remember
Into the sunlight you cherish
Shadowy wife I love
You are mine by being nothing
My shadow dressed in mourning for myself

Winter’s dead buried in snow
They’ve burnt the white hives
In the gardens in the vineyards
Birds on the boughs are singing
Bright springtime gentle April

Death of deathless argyraspids
The snow with silver shields
Flees the ashen dendrophori of
Springtime that poor folk cherish
Who smile again their eyes moist

And my heart is as heavy
As a Damascus lady’s ass
O love I loved you too much
And now I’m in too much pain
The seven swords are unsheathed

Seven swords of melancholy
And jagged edged o bright griefs
Enter my heart and insanity
Wishes to speak for my misery
Can you expect me to forget


THE SEVEN SWORDS

The first is all of silver
Its quivering name is Paline
Its blade a snowy winter sky
Its fate bloody and ghibelline
Vulcan died forging it

The second named Humpback
Is a fair joyful rainbow
Wielded by gods at their weddings
It has slain thirty swashbucklers
And has powers bestowed by Carabosse

The third blue and womanish
Is nonetheless a Chipriape
That’s called Lul of Faltenin
And is borne upon a cloth
By Earnest Hermes who’s now a dwarf

The fourth Fortuna
Is a green golden river
In evening when riverwomen
Bathe their adorable bodies
And the rower’s songs linger

The fifth Saint Fibber
Is the fairest distaff
Is a cypress tree on a grave
Where the four winds kneel
Each night it becomes a torch

The sixth is glory’s metal
The friend with such tender hands
From whom each dawn parts us
Farewell your road lies yonder
Cocks wear themselves out with their fanfares

And the seventh’s languid
A woman a dead rose
I’m thankful the last has come
Close the door on my love
I never knew you

Milky way o shining sister
Of Canaan’s white rivers
And lovers’ white bodies
We dead swimmers shall follow
Your course toward other nebulas

The heavens proclaim in song
That the demons of chance lead us on
To lost tones their violins
Spur the human race to dance
Down its backwards descent

Fates inscrutable fates
Kings shaken by folly
And quavering stars
False women sharing your beds
In deserts crushed by history

The old prince regent Luitpold
Tutor of two mad rulers
Does he sob recalling them
While glowworms flicker
Midsummer Night’s gilded flies

Near a castle without a chatelaine
The bark with lilting barcaroles
Across a white lake through the breath
Of springtime’s trembling breezes
Went sailing a dying swan a siren

One day the king drowned himself
Open-mouthed in the silver water
And then returned floating
To sleep inert on the shore
Face turned toward the changing heavens

June your burning lyre
Scorches my aching fingers
Sad melodious rapture
I’m wandering toward fair Paris
Without the heart to die there

Sundays last forever there
And barrel organs
Sob in drab courtyards
Flowers on Paris balconies
Lean like the Tower of Pisa

Paris evenings high on gin
Ablaze with electricity
Trolleys their spines sparking green
Are playing along the track’s stave
Music of mechanical folly

Cafes swollen with smoke
Cry their gypsy love
From runny-nosed siphons
And waiters in loincloth aprons
Toward you I loved so deeply

I who know lays made for queens
The sad strains of my days
Hymns slaves sang to the moray
The ballad of the poorly-loved
And songs for the sirens

Apollinaire
translated by Jack Hayes
© 2010