Some Poems Of Jules La Forgue

 

 

Complaint
About a lady good and dead

She fled along the avenue;
I followed, magnetized!

Her eyes were saying, 'Alas, I knew
You recognized me too!'

I followed, magnetized!
Ingenuous mouth, regretful eyes;
Oh, why did I recognize
That loyal dream of you?

Lips so pure, but old her eyes;
A white carnation veined too blue!

Oh, nothing, of course, but a stillborn prize,
Far too dead to be true.

Sleep, carnation veined too blue,
Human life somehow survives
Without, defunct now, you.
I'll fast at home for this surprise!

True, she was no one I knew. 

 

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Complaint

About a certain Sunday

Man isn't really so bad, nor woman ephemeral.
Ah! fools cooling your heels at the casino,
All men weep one day, and every woman's maternal;
Everything's filial, you know!
It's only that Fates employ such sorry prejudice
To make us, far and separate, self-exiles,
And blindly calling each other egotists,
And worn out with looking for some unique Anodyne.
Ah! until nature has pity on us,
I'll take my life monotonous.

In this distant cliff-bound village, towards the bells
Once again I come down, through the piercing stares
Of children out for blessings on tepid rolls;
And then, at home, my wretched heart despairs.
The old roofs' sparrows chirping at my window
Watch me eat, without appetite, a la carte;
Perhaps they house my dead friends' souls?
I throw them some bread; as if wounded, they depart!
Ah! until nature has pity on us,
I'll take my life monotonous.

She left yesterday. Perhaps I mind?
Ah yes! So that's what hurts! 

 

My life is caught among your faithful skirts!
Her handkerchief swept me along the Rhine ...
Alone.-The Sunset holds back its Quadriga's prancing
In rays where the midges' ballet is dancing,
Then, toward the soup-smoking roofs, he complains.

And Evening so elusively explains ...
Ah! until nature has pity on us,
Must life be so monotonous?
Fans, pointed arches, or for incest-how many eyes,
Since Being first had hopes, demand their rights!
O skies, will the eyes decay like the rest?
Oh, alone! alone! and so cold!
How many Fall afternoons can life digest?
Ennui, cold eunuch, wallows in our dreams!
So, since we'll never be madrepores again,
We'd better console each other, my fellow men.
And, until nature has pity on us,
Let's try to live monotonous. 

 

 

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Sundays

To give myself to an 'I love you'! I was all set,
When I realized, with some regret,
That I didn't really have myself in hand as yet.

(My self is Galatea blinding Pygmalion!
Impossible to modify that situation.)

And so, poor, wan and paltry paradigm-
Yes, I believe in Me, and waste my time-
I saw my fiancée drift away,
Carried off as the fates dispose,
Like the thorn that sees the petals
Falling, by evening excused, from his best rose.

Then, that anniversary night when all the wind Walkyries
Came back to bellow through cracks in my door:
Vae soli!
But, ah! who cares?
That should have drowned my sorrows long before!
Too late! My little folly is dead!
Who cares about Vae soli?
Forever has my little folly fled.

 

Once the great wind is gagged,
The morning sky at last puts on its Sunday best.
And then, eh! go on, chime! 

 

All you bells of good Sundays!
And put on layettes, collarettes, and white dresses
In a rustle of lavender and thyme
Toward incense and breakfast!
Anything for the family! Sure! and Vae soli.

The young lady with the ivory missal
Returns to her lodgings, modestly.
It's clear her little well-rewhitened body
Knows that it belongs
To a past quite separate from mine!

My body, O sister, hurts in its beautiful soul ...

Oh! there's your piano
Beginning me again, so natal now!
And your heart's whole ignorance stutters out
In barroom tunes to anyone
And grates on your poor flesh!...
To me, Walkyries!
Walkyries of hypochondrias, butcheries!

Ah! with what pleasure I'd twist
That jewel body, that tenor's heart,
And tell them what they are, and what's more,
The way to use it,
To use it for two.
If then you'd only investigate me a bit!

No, no! to suck on the flesh of a chosen heart,
To adore incurable organs,
A glimpse of each other before the tissues fade
Into a monomaniac exile! 

 

And it isn't her flesh that would be all for me.
And I wouldn't be just a noble heart for her;
But to go and make fools of ourselves
Over some brotherly history!
The soul and the flesh, the flesh and soul-
That's the Eden-like spirit, proud
Of being something like Man with Her.

In the meantime, oh! don't do anything in haste,
Oh! just spin your wheel, and pray, and be chaste.

-Come on, least of all poets,
You'll be sick if you spend all your time indoors!
Look, it's a lovely day, everyone's outside,
Go buy a penny's worth of hellebore,
It'll give you a little walk. 

 

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Pierrots

But I need your eyes! As soon as I lose their rays
The sickness of dead calms engulfs my sails,
The shiver of Vae soli! gurgles in my veins...

You should have seen me after that argument!
I wandered about in the cruellest kind of torment
Crying to the walls: My God! My God! Will she relent?

But just the same you wounded my soul's
Antennae with all your trailing lies,
And all your mundane complexities.

I saw your eyes were daring me to dare;
I thought: Oh yes, divine! those eyes, but nothing's there
Behind them. Her soul's an oculist's affair.

I'm made of aesthetics, laminated and true!
I hate the tremolo, the nationalistic hullabaloo;
In short, deep purple mourning's my native hue.

I'm not at all that gay blade!' nor 'Superb!'
But my soul which a raspy cry can disturb
Is candid and distinguished, like a herb.

My nerves can still respond to ringing bells I hear,
I go about in the open air, guileless and without fear
And never, passing mirrors, smile and peer.

It's true, I've knocked around! I've spent myself in ways
Not at all yours; but don't I deserve praise
For having kept faith in your eyes? Say ...

-Oh, let's make up! Come and let me soothe you
Child. What now?
-But all these confessions, you know,
Mixed-up ... confuse me so...

Exit 

 

  

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Pierrot Phrases

    I
Those pools of your eyes, by rushes enclosed,
O valiant leisurely lady,
When will they send back to me
The rising Moon of my beautiful soul?

It's been nearly an hour that langorously
My so simple heart has fed
On you so rigorously hard,
With the honest eyes of a Saint Bernard.

Ah! Madam, I think it rather vile,
When one isn't Mona Lisa,
To put on her style
And infect the poor world with blue ennuis. 

 

    IX
Your display,
Houri,
Looks like a memento mori
Meaning: go, or stay…

But, just so you'll know it,
And why I'm leaving, believe
A French
Poet:

Your heart has no regrets;
Mine is only a character
Lost
In debts. 

 

    XVI
I'm only a playboy of the moon,
Making circles on park lagoons,
And that to all designs contrary,
Save for becoming legendary.

Pulling back with menacing pride
My sleeves, pale mandarin,
My mouth grows round-and I exhale
Sweet counsels of the Crucified.

Ah yes! to become a legend, here
On the threshold of charlatan ages!
But where are the Moons of Yesteryear?
Is there a God still worth His wages? 

 

 

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Derniers vers IX

Oh! if one of Them, some fine evening, would try-
Blind but to drink at my lips, or die!...

Oh! Baptized!
Oh! my whole life's Reason baptized!
Give birth to an 'I love you!'
That would travel through Earth and skies
And then under my window
Lower its eyes!

That would come toward my magnet like lightning
Cracking open a stormy sky,
Then, until dawn, the lustral showers,
The great crying of showers all night long! And last
Let Her come! and lowering her eyes
And drying her feet
At the threshold of our church, O my ancestors,
Ministers of Compassion,
Let her repeat:

'For me you are not like the others,
They're only men, you, you come from Paradise.
Your mouth makes me lower my eyes,
And your gallant carriage carries me away
And I find treasures all along the way!
And I know perfectly well my destiny is bound 

(Oh, I'm quite used to it already!)
To following you until you turn around,
And then to tell you everything you are!

Truly, the rest means nothing to me; I'll wait
With the tenderness all my life went to create.

But let me just tell you that all night long I cry,
And that my sisters are really afraid I'll die.

I sit in corners and weep. Nothing matters any more;
Oh! last Sunday in my prayerbook how I cried!

You ask me why it's you and no one else.
Ah! believe me, it's you and no one else.

I'm as sure as of my foolish heart's depression,
And your fatally mocking expression.'

Thus she would come, escaped, half-dead, to my door
And roll on the mat I had just for that purpose put there.

Thus she would come to Me with absolutely mad eyes,
And follow me with those eyes everywhere, everywhere! 

 

 

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Another complaint
Of Lord Pierrot

She who will put me in touch with Woman!
Let's say to her first, with the mildest of stares,
'The sum of a triangle's angles, dear soul,
Is equal to two squares.'

And if she should cry out, 'Oh God! I love you so!'
'God will look after His own.' Or, pierced to the bone:
'My keyboard has feelings; for you alone I live!'
1: 'Everything is relative.'

Then, with blazing eyes! renouncing banality:
'Ah, you don't really love me; and so many envy you.'
And, with my eyes bolting toward the Unconscious:
'Thanks, not so bad, and you?'

'Let's play Fidelity!' 'O Nature, what's the use?"
'But what can you lose, after all!' And then, reprise:
'Ah, you'll get tired of it first, I'm sure...
'After you, if you please.'

And at last, if, some evening, she dies in my books,
Pretending not to believe my eyes, invoke
Sweetly: 'Oh dear! but we had Something to live for!
Was it, then-no joke?' 

 

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Complaint
About certain annoyances

A sunset of Cosmogonies!
Ah! this Life is so everyday...
And, for the best of memories,
Those paltry talents we display ...

What of those things we wanted to tell,
To be astonishing en route,
Which were to make us, once and for all!
Understand each other beneath the shell.

We wanted to bleed the Silence,
Shake off the exile of conversation;
But no! the ladies have grown sour
Estimating rank and station.

They pout over there with a capable air.
And, under the sky, more than one of us wonders
By just what superaesthetic blunders
These creatures are adorable.

Precisely! One of them summons me
To help look for her ring,
Lost (but where in this wilderness?),
A souvenir of Love, says she.

These creatures are adorable! 

Complaint
Concerning melancholy and literary debates

Along a twilighted sky,
Angelus bells are sounding peace
To an exilescent stepmotherly air;
No forgiveness there.

Feeding on broken crockery,
Down there on the hill by the fortress gate
In profile appears a convalescent
Nag; it's getting late.

Who ever loved me? I begin
Again that impotent refrain,
Not seeing how foolish I remain
To let it get under my skin.

I have a pleasantly fitted physique,
The heart of a well brought up child,
And if it's magnificent minds you seek,
You could do worse than mine.

Well, having wept over History,
I wanted to take out a lease
On a bit of happiness; no deal.
I seemed to be talking Chinese.

 

Ah! my heart, that's enough! Please!
Whenever I can't forget, you know,
My weaknesses break out in a sweat
Until, unclean, I let myself go.

Under my genius my heart curvets,
But, I tell you, just desperately!
If some young lady wants my life,
That's quite all right with me!

Oh go on, poor being, vehement soul!
Into their blasé Jordans, dive;
Just twice massaged with running life
And you'll be exorcized.

Who can answer me, alas?
You there, perhaps you know
What to do with a hypochondriac
Soul? Mine's really first-class.

O Helen, I roam my room;
And while you're down there having tea
In the wealth of some proud September day,
All of me shivers feverishly
Worrying about your health.

While, looking the other way... 

 

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Solo by moonlight

I smoke, stretched out facing the sky,
On the roof of a diligence,
My carcass is jolted, my soul
Dances like Ariel;
Not sweet nor bitter, my lovely soul dallies,
O roads, hillsides, O mists, O valleys,
My lovely soul, ah! let's recapitulate.

We loved each other crazily,
Without a word we let each other go;
Ennui was keeping me exiled,
Ennui which came from everything. So.

Her eyes said, 'Do you understand?
Why don't you understand?'
But neither would take the first step;
We wanted to fall together to our knees.
(Do you understand?)

Where can she be at this hour?
Perhaps she weeps...
Where can she be at this hour?
Oh! take care of yourself, at least, for me!

O freshness of the woods along the way,
O shawl of melancholy, the soul's guard never quite goes
away, 

My life inspires
So many desires!
This diligence roof is magical today.

Let's accumulate irreparables!
Do better than our fate!
The stars are more numerous than the sand
Of seas where others have seen her body bathe;
But all to Death will report.
And there's no port.

Years will pass over all this,
We'll grow hard, each for himself,
And often and already I see myself
While we say to each other, 'If I had only known! .'?
But even married, wouldn't we sometimes groan
"If I had only known, if I had only known!..."?
Ah! cursed rendevous!
Ah! my sterile heart! ...
I've behaved badly from the start.

Insane with happiness,
Thus, what shall we do? I with my soul,
She with her fallible youth?
O aging sinner,
Oh! so many evenings I'll be untrue
To myself, and vile, for you!

 

Her eyes winked, 'Do you understand?
Why don't you understand?'
But neither took the first step
To fall to our knees together. Ah!... 

 

Moonrise,
O road in dream surprised! . . .
We've passed the spinning-mills and sawmills,
Nothing but milestones now;
Little clouds of confectioner's rose

Where a slender crescent of moon arose,
O dreaming road, O silent music...
In this pine wood which knows,
Since the world's beginning,
Only the night,
So many clean, deep chambers!
Oh! to elope for a night!
And I people them, and I see myself there,
And lovers, a handsome pair,
Gesticulate lawlessly.

And I pass by and leave them,
And lie down facing the sky.
The road turns, I am Ariel,
No one waits for me, I'm going to no one's home.
I've only the friendship of hotel rooms.

​

The moon rises.
O road wrapped in dream,
O road without end,
Here is the inn
Where they light the lanterns,
Drink glasses of milk,
Then up postilion! and fly
To a singing of crickets
Under the stars of July. 

O Moonlight,
Feast of Bengal fires drowning my misfortune,
Shadows of poplars along the road ...
The little waterfall listens ...
Listens to its own song...
In these floods of the river Lethe ...

O Solo by moonlight,
You defy me to write.
Oh! this night on the road;
You are frightening, Stars,
All of you! all!
O the flight of this night...
Oh! if only I might
Keep its soul for the coming Fall!...

Now it grows cold,
Oh! if at this hour
She runs like me through forests,
To drown misfortune
In moonlight feasts!
(She so likes staying out late!)
She'll have forgotten her scarf,
She'll catch cold, the hour is so beautiful!
Oh! take care of yourself, for me!
Oh! no more of that coughing! Please!

Ah! why didn't I fall at your knees!
Ah! why didn't you faint at my knees!
I'd have been the perfect husband, for you!
As the frou-frou of your dress is the perfect frou-frou.

 

 

 

  

About a defunct lady

Of course, you wouldn't love me;
You wouldn't love me-not more,
Not more, just between us,
Than a fraternal Opportunity?...
-Ah! she doesn't love me!
Ah! she wouldn't take even the first step
So that we could fall together on our knees.

If she had only met
A, B, C or D, instead of Me,
She would have loved them exclusively!

I see them, I see them...

Wait! I see her
With the noble A, B, C or D.
She was born for every one of them.
It's he, He, whichever he is,
She mirrors;
How perfectly she shakes her head
And says that by nothing, nothing can she be led
Away from that destiny.

It's He; she tells him:
'Oh! your eyes, your walk!
Oh! irresistible, your talk! 

I've been looking for you so long!
Oh! it's really You this time!

He lowers her lamp a little,
And bends her, She, toward his heart,
He kisses her on the temple
And on her orphan heart.

He puts her to sleep with sad caresses,
Awakens her pity with little plaints;
He has fatalistic considerations,
He takes all that exists for witness,
And after a while the hour strikes.

Meanwhile, I wander apart
With her in my heart,
Being surprised, perhaps,
That her window is dark.

She is with him; she feels at home,
And, as we've just been seeing,
She loves him, faithful desperately
In all her beauty of evening!...

I saw them! Oh! It was too complete!
She looked too true
With her large eyes all reflections
In her face so new!

And I'd be just better-than-nothing,

Just better-than-nothing,
Like my day in Time,
Like my place in Space; 

 

And I'm to accommodate myself
To this truly disgusting fate!...

No, no! For Her, all or nothing!
And so I'll go crazily away
Across the oncoming autumn,
Amid the great wind of everything!

I'll tell myself: Oh! at this hour,
She is far away, she weeps,
The great wind's weeping too.
And I am alone in my house
With my noble heart stone-cold,
And without love or anyone;
For all is misery, all is Fall,
All is hardened, there is no mercy.

You thought my love would play that game
For you? Thanks just the same! 

 

 

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The coming winter

Oh! falling rain, oh! nightfall,
Sentimental Blockade! Express from the rising Sun!...
Oh! the wind ...
All Saints' Day, Christmas, the New Year,
Oh, in the drizzle, all my fine chimneys! ...
Of factories...

There's nowhere to sit down, all the benches are wet;
Believe me, it's all over once again,
All the benches are wet, the woods are so rusty,
And so many horns have sounded ton ton, have
sounded ton taine!

Ah! storm clouds rushed from the Channel coasts,
You can boast of spoiling the last of our Sundays.

Drizzle;
In the wet fields, the spiderwebs
Give way to the waterdrops, and fizzle.
Plenipotentiary suns of blond river gold-mines,
Or agricultural pantomimes,
Where is your tomb?
This evening a worn-out sun lies dead on top of the hill,
Lies on his side, in the broom, on his coat.
A sun white as tavern spit 

 

On a litter of golden broom,
The yellow autumnal broom.
And the horns resound!
Calling him...
Calling him back to himself!

Taiaut! Taiaut! and hallali!
O doleful anthem, when will you die!...
And madly they have fun...
And he lies there like a gland torn from a neck,
Shivering, without anyone!...

On, on, and hallali!
In the lead is Winter, that's understood;
Oh! the turns in the highways,
And without the wandering Little Red Riding Hood! ...
Oh! their ruts from last month's cars,
Trails in a Don Quixotic climb
Toward the routed cloud patrols
That the wind mauls toward transatlantic folds!...
Accelerate, accelerate, it's the well-known season, this time.

And the wind, last night, really put on a show!
O havoc, O nests, O diffident gardens!
My heart and my sleep: O echoes of axe-blows!

All those branches had their green leaves still,
Now the underbrush, only a mulch of dead leaves;
Leaves, leaflets, may a good wind's will
Race you off in swarms toward ponds,
Or for the game warden's fireplace,
Or for ambulance mattresses
For soldiers far away from France.

It's the season, the season; rust invades the masses,
Rust gnaws the kilometric spleens
Of telegraph wires on highways no one passes.

The horns, the horns, the horns-melancholy!...
Melancholy!...

Go away, changing their tone,
Changing their tone and their tune,
Ton ton, ton taine, ton ton!...
The horns, the horns, the horns! ...
Have gone away to the North Wind.

I can't get out of this echoing tone...
It's the season, the season, farewell grape harvests!
Now, with a patience of angels, come the rains;
Farewell harvests, baskets, nothing remains,
Those Watteau twig-baskets under the chestnut
trees.
It's the cough in dormitories coming back,
Nursed by only a stranger's herbal tea,
The neighbourhood sadness of pulmonary phthisis,
And all the metropolitan wretchedness.

But wool clothes, rubbers, pharmacies, dreams,
Curtains drawn back from balconies of shores
Facing the sea of suburban roofs,
Prints, lamps, cakes and tea,
Won't I have only you to love!...
(Oh! and then, do you know, apart from the pianos,
Each week, austere twilight mystery,
The journalistic
Vital statistics?) 

 

No, no! it's the season; the planet repines!
May the storm, the storm
Unravel the slippers knitted by Time!
It's the season, O rendings! the season!
And every year, every year
I'll try in chorus to sound its rhyme.