| ECOLOGUE |
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| THE FAUN |
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| These nymphs, I would perpetuate them.
So bright
Their crimson flesh that hovers there, light
In the air drowsy with dense slumbers.
Did I love a dream?
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5 |
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My doubt, mass of ancient night, ends extreme
In many a subtle branch, that remaining the true
Woods themselves, proves, alas, that I too
Offered myself, alone, as triumph, the false
ideal of roses.
Let’s see….
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10 |
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or if those women you note
Reflect your fabulous senses’ desire!
Faun, illusion escapes from the blue eye,
Cold, like a fount of tears, of the most chaste:
But the other, she, all sighs, contrasts you
say
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15 |
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Like a breeze of day warm on your fleece?
No! Through the swoon, heavy and motionless
Stifling with heat the cool morning’s struggles
No water, but that which my flute pours, murmurs
To the grove sprinkled with melodies: and the
sole breeze
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Out of the twin pipes, quick to breathe
Before it scatters the sound in an arid rain,
Is unstirred by any wrinkle of the horizon,
The visible breath, artificial and serene,
Of inspiration returning to heights unseen
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25 |
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O Sicilian shores of a marshy calm
My vanity plunders vying with the sun,
Silent beneath scintillating flowers, RELATE
‘That I was cutting hollow reeds here tamed
By talent: when, on the green gold of distant
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30 |
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Verdure offering its vine to the fountains,
An animal whiteness undulates to rest:
And as a slow prelude in which the pipes exist
This flight of swans, no, of Naiads cower
Or plunge…’
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35 |
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Inert, all things burn in the tawny hour
Not seeing by what art there fled away together
Too much of hymen desired by one who seeks there
The natural A: then I’ll wake to the primal
fever
Erect, alone, beneath the ancient flood, light’s
power,
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40 |
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Lily! And the one among you all for artlessness.
Other than this sweet nothing shown by their
lip, the kiss
That softly gives assurance of treachery,
My breast, virgin of proof, reveals the mystery
Of the bite from some illustrious tooth planted;
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45 |
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Let that go! Such the arcane chose for confidant,
The great twin reed we play under the azure ceiling,
That turning towards itself the cheek’s quivering,
Dreams, in a long solo, so we might amuse
The beauties round about by false notes that
confuse
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50 |
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Between itself and our credulous singing;
And create as far as love can, modulating,
The vanishing, from the common dream of pure
flank
Or back followed by my shuttered glances,
Of a sonorous, empty and monotonous line.
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55 |
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Try then, instrument of flights, O malign
Syrinx by the lake where you await me, to flower
again!
I, proud of my murmur, intend to speak at length
Of goddesses: and with idolatrous paintings
Remove again from shadow their waists’ bindings:
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60 |
So that when I’ve sucked the grapes’ brightness
To banish a regret done away with by my pretence,
Laughing, I raise the emptied stem to the summer’s
sky
And breathing into those luminous skins, then
I,
Desiring drunkenness, gaze through them till
evening.
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65 |
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O nymphs, let’s rise again with many memories.
‘My eye, piercing the reeds, speared each
immortal
Neck that drowns its burning in the water
With a cry of rage towards the forest sky;
And the splendid bath of hair slipped by
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70 |
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In brightness and shuddering, O jewels!
I rush there: when, at my feet, entwine (bruised
By the languor tasted in their being-two’s
evil)
Girls sleeping in each other’s arms’ sole
peril:
I seize them without untangling them and run
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75 |
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To this bank of roses wasting in the sun
All perfume, hated by the frivolous shade
Where our frolic should be like a vanished
day.’
I adore you, wrath of virgins, O shy
Delight of the nude sacred burden that glides
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80 |
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Away to flee my fiery lip, drinking
The secret terrors of the flesh like quivering
Lightning: from the feet of the heartless one
To the heart of the timid, in a moment abandoned
By innocence wet with wild tears or less sad
vapours.
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85 |
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‘Happy at conquering these treacherous fears
My crime’s to have parted the dishevelled
tangle
Of kisses that that the gods kept so well
mingled:
For I’d scarcely begun to hide an ardent laugh
In one girl’s happy depths (holding back
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90 |
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With only a finger, so that her feathery candour
Might be tinted by the passion of her burning
sister,
The little one, naïve and not even blushing)
Than from my arms, undone by vague dying,
This prey, forever ungrateful, frees itself
and is gone,
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Not pitying the sob with which I was still
drunk.’
No matter! Others will lead me towards happiness
By the horns on my brow knotted with many a tress:
You know, my passion, how ripe and purple already
Every pomegranate bursts, murmuring with the
bees:
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100 |
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And our blood, enamoured of what will seize it,
Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire yet.
At the hour when this wood with gold and ashes
heaves
A feast’s excited among the extinguished leaves:
Etna! It’s on your slopes, visited by Venus
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105 |
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Setting in your lava her heels so artless,
When a sad slumber thunders where the flame burns
low.
I hold the queen!
O certain punishment…
No, but the soul
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110 |
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Void of words, and this heavy body,
Succumb to noon’s proud silence slowly:
With no more, forgetting blasphemy, I
Must sleep, lying on the thirsty sand, and as
I
Love, open my mouth to wine’s true constellation!
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115 |
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Farewell to you, both: I go to see the shadow
you have become.
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116 |
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