I became philosophical long ago,
My sonnets dried out in the nervous pen of my senses.
The languid and long birds of desire
- Which were neither languid
Nor long -
Flew off from my dreams for evermore.
Someone must have heard their romantic cries,
Followed the volatile circles of their reveries,
In ten syllable verses, measured rhymes,
In pamphlet precision.
Du Heine de deuxième qualité, in tune with the time's
Accepted trend.
All this however against a sky of sentiment,
Daring, sensual, rapturous.
I had a flaming heart, a soul uplifted
By hymns, a loquacious voice for odes
Which on impulse I would call
Modern.
I had taken all the stars to myself.
Had perceived the angle of the spirit’s compass
On a vast, unfinished arch raised
Over the world’s struggle for survival,
Life devouring life, natural and cruel laws,
Epicurean visions, frozen by reason.
Nature granted me the gift of prose
And the verse comes with.
Were I to write to Storck once more,
I might add these sextains,
Slightly dull, but faithful to my nature
That refuses to attend only to Nature.
A child’s innocent steps invaded my soul
And I can hardly tell whether the crying is mine
Or born of a catastrophe.
The tears I think of belong to the possible saint
Facing the dawn of a world
of Beauty, Love, Justice and the Universe.