Zone

In the end you’re weary of this ancient world

Shepherdess o Eiffel Tower the flock of bridges is bleating
        this morning

You’ve lived long enough amongst ancient Romans and Greeks

Here even the automobiles look obsolete
Religion alone remains brand new religion
Remains simple as the hangars at Port Aviation

In Europe only you Christianity aren’t antique
The most modern European is you Pope Pius X
And you whom windows watch shame restrains you
From walking into a church and making confession
You read handbills catalogs ads that sing out loud
Here’s poetry this morning and as for prose there’s the papers
There are dime novels full of detectives
Portraits of great men and thousands of other titles

I saw this morning a fine street whose name I’ve forgotten
Fresh and clean it was the sun’s clarion
Bosses workers and lovely secretaries
Monday morning to Saturday evening walk there four times a day
Three time there each morning the siren moans
A hot-tempered bell bays about noon
Lettering on billboards and walls
And door-plates and notices shriek like parrots
I love the charm of this factory street
Located in Paris between rue Aumont-Thiéville and the avenue
        des Ternes

There’s the young street and you still a little child
Your mother dresses you only in blue and white
You’re very pious and with your oldest pal René Dalize
You love nothing as much as church ceremonies
It’s nine o’clock the gas flickers blue you sneak out of the
        dormitory
You pray all night in the school chapel
While Christ’s flaming glory
Revolves forever divine and eternal an amethyst depth
It’s the lovely lily all of us raise
The redheaded torch the wind won’t blow out
Pale and vermillion son of the sorrowful mother

The tree always bushy with prayers
The double power of eternity and honor
The star with six branches

God who dies Friday and is resurrected Sunday
It’s Christ who lifts off better than aviators
He holds the world record for height

Christ pupil of the eye
Twentieth pupil of the centuries he knows what to do
And turns this century into a bird like Jesus ascending the
        skies
Devils in the abyss raise their heads to watch
They say It’s imitating Simon Magus
They say if it takes flight call it a fugitive
Angels flutter around the acrobat
Icarus Enoch Elijah Apollonius of Tyana
Hover around the first airplane
Now and then they scatter to let those bearing the Sacred
        Eucharist pass
Priests ascending eternally elevating the host
The plane lands at last without folding its wings
The sky’s filled then with swallows by the millions
In a flash crows falcons owls appear
Ibises storks and flamingos arrive from Africa
The Roc celebrated in story and song
Soars grasping the skull of Adam in its talons
The eagle swoops screeching over the horizon
From America comes the little hummingbird
From China come the pihi birds both long and supple
That have a single wing and fly coupled

And here’s the dove the holy spirit
Escorting the lyre bird and the ocellated peacock
The phoenix that self-creating pyre
For an instant veils everything with its ardent ash
The three sirens leaving their perilous perch
Come singing their lovely song
And all of them eagle phoenix and Chinese pihi
Fraternize with the flying machine

Right now you’re strolling alone through Paris amidst the
        throng
Herds of bellowing buses go rolling past
Love’s anguish has got you by the throat
As if you’ll never be loved again
In the old day you would have entered a monastery
You’re ashamed when you catch yourself saying a prayer
You make fun of yourself your laughter crackles like hellfire
Your laughter’s sparks gild the depths of your life

It’s a painting hung in a dim museum
And time to time you go there to see it up close

Today you’re walking through Paris the women are bloody
Something I’d rather not recall it was during the decline of
        beauty

Surrounded by fervent flames Our Lady beheld me at Chartres
Blood of your Sacred Heart inundated me at Montmartre
I’m sick of hearing blessed words
The love I endure is like syphilis
And the image that possesses you keeps you alive through
        insomnia and anguish
Passing image always at your side

Right now you’re at the Mediterranean shore
Under lemon trees that stay in blossom all year
You go boating with your friends
One from Nice one from Menton and two from La Turbie
Fearful we observe the octopi of the deep
And through the seaweed swim fish the Savior’s image

You’re in a inn garden outside Prague
You’re completely happy a rose lies on the table
And rather than write your tale in prose
You observe the chafer asleep in the heart of the rose

Appalled you see yourself traced in St Vitus’ agates
You were downcast the day you saw yourself there
You looked like Lazarus bewildered by daylight
The hands of the Jewish quarter’s clock run backwards
And you step back slowly too in your life
Climbing to Hradchin and in the evening
Listening to Czech songs in the taverns

Here you are in Marseilles amongst watermelons

Here you are in Coblenz at the Hotel of the Giant

Here you are in Rome under a Japanese crabapple tree

Here you are in Amsterdam with a gal you find pretty who’s ugly
She’s engaged to a student from Leyden
They rent rooms there in Latin Cubicula locanda
I recall I spent three days there and three in Gouda

You’re in Paris arraigned by the magistrate
Under arrest like a common criminal

You undertook both sad and pleasant travels
Before you understood lies and age
You suffered from love at both twenty and thirty
I’ve lived like a fool and wasted my time
You don’t dare look at your hands at such moments I want to sob
Over you the one I love over everything you find horrible

You watch your eyes filled with tears these wretched emigrants
They believe in God they pray their women bear children
Their odor fills the lobby of Saint-Lazare station
They follow their star like the three wise men
They hope to find silver in Argentina
And return to their homeland having made a fortune
A family transports a red quilt as you transport your heart
That quilt and your dreams are both unreal
Some emigrants remain here and rent rooms
On Rue des Rosiers or rue des Écouffes in the slums
I’ve often seen them evenings they take the air
And like chessmen rarely ever move far
Mostly they’re Jews their wives wear wigs
And sit anemic in the back of shops

You’re standing at a crapulous bar
You get a coffee for two bits amongst the losers

It’s night you’re in a great restaurant

These women aren’t wicked of course they have their worries
All of them even the ugliest have made their lovers suffer

She’s the daughter of a constable from the Isle of Jersey

I haven’t seen her hands they’re rough and chapped

I feel enormous pity for the scars on her belly

Now I humble my mouth to a whore with a horrible laugh

You’re alone the day’s breaking
Milkmen are clinking their bottles through the streets

Night leaves like a dark-skinned beauty
Ferdine the false or else attentive Leah

And you’re drinking this burning liquor like your life
The life you drink like spirits

You’re walking toward Auteuil you’re going home on foot
To sleep amongst fetishes from Oceania and Guinea
Christs of other forms and other beliefs
Lesser Christs of dim hopes

Farewell farewell

Sun slit throat


Guillaume Apollinaire
translation © Jack Hayes 1990-2010