Marie

    You danced there a little girl
    Will you dance there a grandmother
    It’s the hop skip of the jig
    All the bells will ring
    But when will you come back Marie

    The mummers are silent
    The music so far off
    It seems to come from the sky
Yes I’d love you but love you only a little
    My affliction’s delicious

    The sheep move off through the snow
    Woolen flocks & silver flakes
    Soldiers marching if only I had
    A heart of my own a changing heart
    Changing but then what do I know

    Do I know where your hair will be
    Curls unruly as ocean whitecaps
    Do I know where your hair will be
    And your hands the autumn leaves
    That scatter like our vows

    I used to walk by the Seine
    An ancient book under my arm
    The river’s the same as my pain
    It flows & never runs dry
    When will the week ever end

Apollinaire
translation © Jack Hayes 2010

The Traveler

Open this door where I'm knocking in tears

Life is unsettled as Euripos straits

You were watching a cloudbank descending
With the orphan steamship toward future fevers
And all those regrets and all those repentances
    Do you remember

Waves arched fish surmarine flowers
One night it was the sea
And the rivers spread wide there

I remember I still remember

One evening I stopped at a gloomy inn
Near the Luxembourg
At the back of the room a Christ was flying
Someone had a ferret
Someone else a hedgehog
We played cards
And you had forgotten me

Do you remember the railway stations’ long orphanage
We passed through cities that spun round all the day
And vomited the sun all the night
O sailors o dark women and you my comrades
    Do you remember

Two sailors who never parted
Two sailors who never spoke
The youngest died capsized

Dear companions
The railway stations’ electric chimes the reapers’ song
A butcher’s sled regiment of countless streets
The bridges’ cavalry nights livid with alcohol
Towns I’ve seen living like madwomen

Do you recall the suburbs the plaintive flock of landscapes

Cypresses cast their shadows under the moon
That night at summer’s decline I heard
An inflamed languorous bird and
The eternal sound of a wide dark river

But dying & spinning toward the estuary
Were all the glances all the glances of all eyes
The banks were deserted grassy silent
And on the other side the mountain stood clear

Then soundlessly without seeing a living soul
Living shadows passed across the mountain
In profile or suddenly turning blurred faces
Keeping their lances’ shadows always forward

These shadows against this sheer mountain
Grew or now & then abruptly shrank
And these beard shadows wept as if human
Gliding step by step along the clear mountain

Who do you remember in these old photos
Do you remember the day a bee dropped into the fire
It was you recall at the end of summer

Two sailors who’d never parted
The elder wore an iron chain round his neck
The younger kept his blond hair in a pigtail

Open this door where I'm knocking in tears

Life is unsettled as Euripos straits


Apollinaire 
translation, Jack Hayes © 2010

Marizibill

On the High Street in Cologne
Evenings she walked back and forth
Offering it to everyone a real babe
Then bored of the sidewalks she
Drank till closing in shady bars

She hit bottom
For a carrot-top ruddy pimp
He reeked of garlic
Who coming back from Formosa
Snatched her from a Shanghai brothel

I know people all sorts
They don’t live up to their destinies
Wavering like dead leaves
Their eyes half burnt-out fires
Their hearts ajar like their doors


Apollinaire
translation © Jack Hayes 2010

Procession

for M. Léon Bailby

Tranquil bird on inverse wing bird
Nesting in mid-air
At the limit where our soil still gleams
Lower your second eyelid earth dazzles you
When you raise your head

And I too up close am gloomy and dull
A fog that settles obscuring the lanterns
A hand rising all of a sudden in front of your eyes
A veil between you and all light
And I’ll withdraw growing luminous in the midst of shadows
And the aligned eyes of beloved stars

Tranquil bird on inverse wing bird
Nesting in mid-air
At the limit where my memory still gleams
Lower your second eyelid
Not because of the sun not because of the earth
But for this oblong fire that will intensify
To a point where one day it will become the only light

One day
One day I was waiting for myself
I told myself Guillaume it’s time you came
So that I may know at last who I am
I who know others

I know them by my five senses and several others
I only need to see their feet to remake people by the thousands
To see their panicked feet a single hair of their heads
Or their tongue if I feel like playing doctor
Or their children if I feel like playing prophet
The owners’ ships my colleagues’ pens
The coins of the blind the hands of mutes
Or because of its words not its writing
A letter written by someone over twenty
I only need to sniff the odor of their churches
The odor of rivers through their cities
The scent of flowers in public gardens
O Cornelius Aggrippa the smell of one little dog is enough

For me to describe precisely your fellow citizens of Cologne
Their wise-kings and the swarm of Ursulines
That inspired your error regarding all women
I only need to sample the laurel they raise for me to love or scorn
And to touch his clothing
To determine if someone has the chills
People I know
I only need to hear the sound of their footsteps
To point out forever which direction they’ve taken
All these things are enough for me to believe I have the right
To resurrect the others
One day I was waiting for myself
I told myself William it’s time you came
And with a lyric step the ones I love moved forward
And I wasn’t among them
Giants covered with algae moved through their undersea
Cities where only towers were islands
And that sea with the brightness of its depths
Flowed as blood through my veins and caused my heart to beat
Then there came upon earth a thousand white tribes
Each man of them holding a rose in his hand
And the language they invented along the way
I learned it from their mouths and I still speak it
The procession passed and I searched for my body there
All those who arrived and were not myself
Brought the pieces of myself one by one

They built me little by little like a tower
The peoples crowded together and I myself appeared
Formed by all bodies and all human matters

Time past Passed away You gods who formed me
I only live passing on as you passed on
And averting my eyes from the future’s void
I see all the past arise in myself

Nothing’s dead but what hasn’t yet lived
Beside the shining past tomorrow’s colorless
It’s formless too beside what’s perfectly finished
Presenting at once the effort and the effect


Apollinaire
translation © Jack Hayes 2010

Clotilde

Anemone and columbine
Sprout in the garden
Where melancholy’s sleeping
With love and scorn on either side

Our shadows come there too
When night dispels them
The sun that gave them their gloom
Vanishes with them

Divinities of running streams
Let their hair flow
Move on you have to follow
The lovely shadow you yearn for

Apollinaire
translation © Jack Hayes 1990-2010

The House of the Dead

for Maurice Raymal

The house of the dead lay at the graveyard’s edge
And enclosed it like a cloister
Inside its glass cases
Like the ones in chic shops
Instead of smiling standing upright
Mannequins grimaced throughout eternity

Arriving in Munich after two or three weeks
I visited merely by chance and for the first time
This nearly deserted cemetery
And my teeth chattered
Seeing this entire bourgeoisie
Exposed and dressed in their best
Awaiting burial

Suddenly
Swift as memory
Their eyes were rekindled
Glass cell by glass cell
The heavens were peopled with an inveterate
Apocalypse
And the earth flat into infinity
As before Galileo
Swarmed with a thousand unmoving mythic beasts
An angel in diamond shattered every glass case
And the dead accosted me
With otherworldly demeanors
Though their faces and postures
Soon became less funereal
And heaven and earth both lost
Their look of phantasmagoria

The dead rejoiced
To see their dead bodies between themselves and the light
They laughed over their shadow and watched it
As if it it truly were
Their past life

So I counted them
There were forty-nine men
Women and children
Who all grew better looking
And then looked at me
With so much warmth
With so much tenderness even
That suddenly
Befriending them
I invited them out for a stroll
Far from their houses’ archways

And arm in arm
Whistling military airs
Yes all your sins are forgiven
We left the graveyard behind

We passed through the city
And met up often
With parents with friends who joined
This little band of the recently deceased
Everyone was so gay
So fetching so hearty
If it would’ve taken a clever rascal
To tell the dead from the living
Then we scattered
Across the countryside

Two light horsemen joined us
We welcomed them in
They were whittling viburnum
And elder
Which they made into whistles
To give to the children

They hadn’t forgotten how to dance
These dead men and women
They could drink too
And time to time a bell
Announced that another keg
Was about to be tapped

A dead woman sat on a bench
Near a barberry bush
And let a student
Get on his knees
To speak to her of betrothal

I will wait for you
Ten years twenty if I must
Your wish is my desire

I will wait for you
All of your life
The dead woman answered

Some children
Of this world or the next
Were singing rounds
The words absurd and lyrical
Songs that doubtless are the remains
Of humanity’s
Most ancient poetic monuments

The student placed a ring
On the young dead woman’s finger
Here is the pledge of my love
Of our betrothal
Neither time nor absence
Will make us forget our vows
And one day we’ll have a lovely wedding
Tufts of myrtle
In your garments and in your hair
A fine sermon at the church
Long speeches after the banquet
And music
And music

Our children
Said the bride-to-be
Will be lovelier lovelier still
Alas! the ring was broken
Than if they were silver or gold

Emerald or diamond
Will be brighter brighter still
Than the stars in the heavens
Than the dawn’s light
Than your glances my love
Will smell sweeter still
Alas! the ring is broken
Than lilacs about to blossom
Than thyme or rose or heather
Or lavender or rosemary

The musicians went away
And we continued our stroll

On the shore of a lake
We played ducks and drakes
Skipping flat rocks
Over water that scarcely rippled

Some boats were moored
In a cove
We untied them
And the whole band embarked
Several dead men rowed
With just as much vigor as living men

At the prow of the boat I steered
A dead man spoke with a young woman
Who wore a yellow dress
A black corsage
With blue ribbons and a gray hat
Decked with a small uncurled feather

I love you
He said
As the pigeon loves the dove
As the nocturnal insect
Loves light

Too late
The living woman answered
Deny this forbidden love deny if it
I’m married
See this shining ring
My hands are trembling
I’m weeping I want to die

The boats had landed
At a spot where the light horsemen
Knew of an echo that answered from the shore
We called to if it without let up

The questions were so extravagant
And the answers so apt
We could have laughed ourselves to death
And the dead man said to the living woman

We’ll be so happy together
The waters will close over us once more
But you’re weeping your hands are trembling
None of us will return

We went ashore and headed back
The lovers were in love
And two-by-two with lovely mouths
They walked at uneven distances
The dead men had chosen living women
And the living men
Dead women
Sometimes a juniper
Appeared like a phantom
The children split the air
Blowing viburnum
Or elder whistles
With hollow cheeks
While the soldiers
Sang Tyrolean airs
Yodeling answers the way if it’s done
In the mountains

In the city
Our band diminished bit by bit
We said
Farewell
See you tomorrow
See you later
A lot went into the beer gardens
Some others left us
At a dog butcher
Where they bought their supper

Soon I was left alone with the dead
Who went straightaway
To the graveyard
Where
Under the archways
I saw them again
Laid out
Unmoving
And dressed up
Awaiting burial underneath glass

They had no idea
Of what had happened
But the living guarded the memory
If it was an unforeseen blessing
And so certain
That they had no fear of losing if it

They lived so nobly
That those who just the evening before
Had looked on them as equals
Or even less
Now admired
Their power their wealth their genius
For nothing will raise you up
Like having loved a dead man or a dead woman
You’re so pure that you end up
In the glaciers of memory
Merging with recollection
You’re fortified for life
And no longer need anyone

Apollinaire
Jack Hayes
© 2010

Annie

On the coast of Texas
Between Mobile and Galveston there is a
Large garden with roses galore
It also contains a country house
Itself a big rose

A woman often strolls
All alone through the garden
And when I walk past on the road fringed with lime trees
We look at each other

Because that woman's a Mennonite
Her rosebushes and her garments have no buttons
Two are missing from my jacket
The lady and I observe almost the same rite

Apollinaire
translation by Jack Hayes
© 2010