Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writers. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Unica Zürn ...excerpt from the Man of Jasmine...




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Unica Zürn  Berlin - Grunewald 1928



You ghostly gaze! Shy and radiant,
wicked with loneliness and humour; your sombrenes,
seemingly without beginning
and thus without end, shines
through my dream-lit rooms. I ask myself
whether angels might have such eyes?

from The Man of Jasmine



Sunday, March 21, 2010

More Urmuz ...poesy...Fuchsiada excerpt


drawing by Marcel Iancu


Fuchsiada
Heroico-erotic poem, musical too, in prose

A deluge of hollers and threats. A deluge of disonancies, of chords upturned and unconcluded, of dodged cadenzas, faulty consonancies, of trills, but above all, rests, showered from every direction upon the exiled artist. A hail storm of jagged sharps and naturals pelted his back ceaselessly, a drawn out rest shattered his spectacles... Those gods possessed of viciousness in excess barraged him with shinbones, with aeolian harps, with lyres and cimbals, and, utmost of score-settling, with Acteon, with Polyeucte, and with Enescu's Third Symphony, whose inspired music on this occasion, originated indeed from Olympus.
     At last, Fuchs's fate was decided. He was to first roam through Chaos with unbearable swiftness, in five minute revolutions, around the planet Venus, then after, so as to wholly expiate the affront brought upon the goddess, he was to be exiled companionless to the uninhabited planet, with the burden of giving birth on his own and on his own alone, to that off-spring, that superior race of artists, which should have sprung forth in Olympus from his amorous union with Venus.
     Fuchs barely began carrying out his verdict, when Pallas-Athena, forbearing, stepped in (unexpectedly) on his behalf.
     He was granted permission to fall back to earth, but only under one condition: there is so much useless off-spring there, artistic or not, that it was not at all needed to beget any other. It was foisted on Fuchs the task of doing away with snobbism and spinelessness of thought in art on earth's realms.
     Placed thus, in this dire bind, after a prolonged and mature cogitation, the artist determined that this last condition was far more difficult to bring about than the off-spring begetting on Venus...
     A heroical decision was then reached by our hero in his roaming through Chaos. He consented to accept Athena's assistance under the condition imposed upon him; but, when he sensed the proximity of earth, he did what he did and, budging a bit to the right, he dropped down in that very neighborhood, slightly shady, from which he departed and which spellbound him such.
     Knowing himself now well prepared, he would learn here how to put into practice that which he hadn't known until then, so that afterwards, fully initiated, he would request the Venerated One's audience so as to try to rehabilitate himself as best he could in what had been left wanting. In this manner, he told himself, it will become possible to give birth to that new race of supermen, and thus would be released of the duty to undertake on earth the impossible bane imposed upon him.
     But the vestals of pleasure, who had welcomed him mirthfuly, upon discerning his intentions, surrounded him from all directions, intercepted abruptly his forward motion and beleaguered, bereaved, flailing their arms in the air in sign of protest, excommunicated him from the neighborhood, exclaiming in unison: "Woe to you, Fuchs, we have lost you and recognize you no longer, because formerly you were the only one who, from Plato's times onwards, understood how to love us purely... What sort of thoughts do you nurse as you step amongst us? Woe to us from now on deprived of the aesthetics of your sonatas, woe to you deprived of the inspiration of our lofty love! Fie on her who, though our mistress, Olympus's and the world's, did not understand how to appreciate you, and spurning your love and art, led you to fall so high up... Flee, Fuchs, you are unworthy of us now!
     Flee, Fuchs, you slimy satyr! How could you devalue the noblest organ, the ear?! Flee Fuchs, you're dishonoring this neighborhood,
     Flee, Fuchs, and may the gods protect you!"
     Thus excommunicated, and frightened of an eventual discharge of their liquid displeasure, Fuchs sat swiftly at his piano and, pedaling steadily and forcefully, arrived lastly at his quiet shelter, with his spirits oppressed, disconcerted, sickened of men as well as of gods, of love as well as of muses...
     He fled to get his umbrella back from the shop and, taking his piano along, they vanished forever in the midst of nature, glorious and unbounded...
     From there his music radiates with equal force in all directions, thus causing the word of grateful Fate to be carried out in part, ordaining him that through his scales, concerts and etudes of staccato, to spread far the word and by their grace, through the power of education, to cause the appearance in time on this planet an improved and superior race of beings, towards his glory, his piano's, and Eternity's...  


full Fuchsiada at Exquisite corpse


A bit of metaphysics and astronomy ... Urmuz


Urmuz (Romania 1883-1923)






A bit of metaphysics and astronomy

unfinished essay

It is simply not true - the symposium said with one accord - that in the beginning the "word came from God" or that "God was the word." In the beginning - the drinking party reaffirmed - before there was any "word", there was only the " deaf-and-dumb alphabet"; for surely it is hard to beleive that cosmis substances and matter could have learnt straight away to express anything at all; they may not even have been able to ask to be excused or even to say "papa" or "mama". Most probably - the diners went on- the heavenly bodies took shape neither by God's munificence, nor from their own own urge to spin and thus create something out of nothing merely for the sake of turning round and round , nor from gaseous solids.
It is more likely that they wherre neither created nor uncreated: nobody's children, born of accurate or inaccurate calculations, in instalments, with sweat and toil; in addition,
insufficiently nourished at the Heavenly Maternity Clinic with milk mixed with soda water by the dairymaids of the Milky Way.
Even admitting that they spin only for their own amusement, it is still difficult to suppose that their motives are entirely disinterested, without the intention of making the slightest profit. Surely it would seeem rather ridiculous for anyone to gyrate for ever and ever, free of charge, just to be seen by others...
--Whaaat? Mean and selfish interests among the heavenly bodies? naively protested the ideologically-minded plebs, waiting outside in the courtyard for the verdict.
The crowd had good reason, and yet no reason at all for being so apprehensive...
In fact, who in the first place could have impelled matter and he cosmic force into becoming something when they, in their turn, by destroying themselves or simply by handing in their resignations, could at anytime have compelled the "something" to become the "nothing"?...
Then again, who among us can complain that the primordial force, the cause of all causes, may never be attained or discovered, when everybody is striving to reach it from the start, or from behind, and nobody ever attempts to cover it, for a moment, or to catch it on the hip at leas once?
And what is the good of fighting to discover a cause, the sole and primordial cause, when unfortunately causes are at the same time affects; and these in turn bring about other effects which are diabolically manifold and tangled?
What then is the point of our seeking a single cause, this initial, generative force which we feel must exist, when it is itself so stubbornly determined to produce nothing but multiplicity? It thirst for multitudes, for complexities and contradictions; it needs millions of people, flies, sponges, monsters, stars -- all at a price of great suffering and inconvenience to them. It also needs "trunk-fish" and "sawfish", and swallows numbers, distances and high speeds, with no purpose or necessity...



Saturday, March 6, 2010

Joseph Jengehino...poems and drawing..




a physiology of conversion (collab with Amely Jones)

Gerald slices his thoughts with a citrus knife. Removes the matter.
His fiction is the salt she sucks from open wounds.
Her machinery is too much for him. At night he tears it down.
He likes to watch her mouth sleep.
likes the way it is crooked but still toxic. but silent.
He's afraid of her.
He's afraid of her unobstructed mind and the traps and equations she uses.
He wants to get under her skin
his static can break her. disrupt her.
break the plane of her bones,
break the circuitry of her mind,
give her parachutes to numbness.
Her head is turned, the profile of a bird on a pillowcase.
he touches her throat, a little
Hides his hands
He wants to hold her
in the softest prison,
place a thumb on her eye,
and feel the kaleidoscope's stained and transparent explosions.
The dreams are fueling her mind
maybe he can make her smile when she is like this...
but he won't touch those toxic lips
even with the latex fingers
he envisions her a future huffing oxygen from an apparatus.
sees her body tied to machines
sees the bricks of her mind dissolving
in a place where he can forever watch her mouth sleep




The Broken Neck of the Swan




Joseph Jengehino blog at MYSPACE



Thursday, January 21, 2010

Leonor Fini... Sphinx & Charles Baudelaire...Beauty..poem and drawings...




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Beauty



I am fair, O mortals! like a dream carved in stone,
And my breast where each one in turn has bruised himself
Is made to inspire in the poet a love
As eternal and silent as matter.


On a throne in the sky, a mysterious sphinx,
I join a heart of snow to the whiteness of swans;
I hate movement for it displaces lines,
And never do I weep and never do I laugh.


Poets, before my grandiose poses,
Which I seem to assume from the proudest statues,
Will consume their lives in austere study;


For I have, to enchant those submissive lovers,
Pure mirrors that make all things more beautiful:
My eyes, my large, wide eyes of eternal brightness!




Charles Baudelaire - The Flowers of Evil
Translation by William Aggeler

Thursday, January 14, 2010

Insomnia or the Devil at Large... Henry Miller ... drawings



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Drawings by Henry Miller, made during a bout of Insomnia 1965/66


“They reflect the varying moods of three in the morning. Some were sprinkled with bird seed, some with songes, and some with mensonges. Some dripped from the brush like pink arsenic; others clogged up on me and came out as welts and bruises. Some were
organic, some inorganic, but they were all intended to lead their own life in the garden of Abracadabra.”



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MORE >>>> Henry Miller

Monday, January 4, 2010

Andrey Bely... poem and drawing...




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VERTIGO

Now I have wandered long years and many,
Have drowned in the haze of the late afternoon
Until my poor feet are bleeding and heavy,
They must give out soon.

As I lounge in the fumes of the charcoal vapors
Questions pop out, like an unpaid debt,
And someone offers- in a tasty little packet -
A cigarette.

And then when I sit with elbows on the table,
Swoonin with awe, merged fearfully
With things not of earth, somebody says
"Here's your tea."

Oh, I am a child of the flame, of the glory,
Visions shine before me all through the night,
But can it be- can it be possible
They will not even know me by sight?




Friday, December 25, 2009

The Act of Drawing... Unica Zurn







The pen "floats" tentatively above the white paper, until she discovers the spot for the first eye. Only once she is "being looked at" from the paper does she start to find her bearings and effortlessy add one motif to the next....


The Man of Jasmine - Atlas Press 1994



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Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Quentin Crisp... How to Have a Life-Style...

a few scans and excerpt from a favourite book and treasured memories...



° Quentin Crisp °
(25 December 1908 – 21 November 1999), born Denis Charles Pratt, was an English writer and raconteur


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... I am not hiding in the shadow of Mr Socrates and merely reiterating that the purpose of education is self-knowledge. This is but 'O' level stuff; at 'A' level, the stylist's level, we must learn self-projection.

....
What we need is not massive grants for the visual arts but encouragement to learn singing, dancing and a whole syllabus of self-glorifying techniques. Painting is only a rebus of self-expression. Why not learn expression itself?

...
We do not need the perfectly designed chair; we want a capacity for relaxing even on a bed of nails. We ought not to waste time constructing a 'with-it' telephone kiosk; we should rather cultivate such perfect diction that we can communicate against all odds. We shall find we already have a golden city when we have all become divine beings.

...
All we need to do is to esteem the freedom to reject as highly as the licence to accept; to reform ourselves instead of other people; to be aware of the quality of our experience instead of its quantity; to live for living's sake - with style...



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" I have always lived my life in the profession of being."


Saturday, November 7, 2009

Devour the fire...Harry Crosby 2 Poems... illustration Alastair...



± RED SKELETONS, 1927 ±


TEMPLE DE LA DOULEUR

My soul has suffered breaking on the wheel,
Flogging with lead, and felt the twinging ache
Of barbéd hooks and jagged points of steel,
Peine forte et dure, slow burning at the stake,
Blinding and branding, stripping on the rack,
The canque and kourbash and the torquéd screw,
The boot and branks, red scourging on the back,
The gallows and the gibbet. All for you.


These tortures are as nothing to the pain
That I have suffered when you gaze at me
With cold disdainful eyes. You do not deign
To smile or talk or even set me free-
Yet once you let me hold your perfumed hand
And danced with me a stately saraband.

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SALOME

Proud panoply of fans and frankincense,
Gold blare of trumpets, flowered robes of state,
Unnumbered symbols of magnificence,
To lead Salome through the palace gate,
Where loud the prophet of the Lord blasphemes
The red abominations of her race
And chides her for her flesh-entangled dreams
and turns his back upon her painted face.


Thus do we turn from some red-shadowed lust
That through the broken forests of the brain
Weaves silently with tentacles out-thrust,
Groping in darkness, but for one in vain,
For like a sliding sun the soul has fled
Leaving a princess and a vultured head.

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¤ SUN-TESTAMENT ¤

Histoire d'O... Leonor Fini... part 1...



A few scans from a favourite possesion...

Histoire d'O

The Story of O


(1975)

Pauline Reage (Pseudonym for Dominque Aury)
illustrated by Leonor
Fini


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Wednesday, November 4, 2009

RIP Alda Merini...



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Winged woman, stop your rancor:
the life that you bear of mystery
smells bad above the cushion
and moribund passes away.
Just so every proud tree oozes
love, behind your dark manures
that you spread of seed and of lust,
and pays at least for the seduction
of violated souls. Even so cantata
of the devil, you are an enemy of God
and then sullenly your lust
coagulates over the souls of heroes,
and you are young. You harm
all who see the path
of your peace and no one penalizes
you for the altar of your greatness
which makes offers to gods. As if you
were a goddess dressed in lust,
you call the gold into your arms
as I call the sons of the night.


¤¤¤


I do not need money.

I have need of feelings
of words, words chosen wisely
of flowers called thoughts,
of roses called presences
of dreams inhabiting the trees,
of songs that make statues dance,
of stars that murmur to the ear of lovers.
I need poetry
this spell which burns the weight of words
that arouses emotions and gives new colors.

Love do not damn me to my fate
Hold me open all the seasons
let my great and warm decline
not fall asleep along drives
put in passive all the passions
sleep on the pillow tenderly
where grow provident ambitions
of love and universal passion
take my everything and do not hurt me.
Alda Merini



Sunday, November 1, 2009

La Portentosa Vida de la Muerte (The Astounding Life of Death)...Joaquin Bolaños.



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†The Astounding Life of Death†

La Portentosa Vida de la Muerte (The Astounding Life of Death) is an 18th Century Mexican book written by Joaquin Bolaños. In it, Bolaños recounts the many adventures of Death, from her beginnings in the Garden of Eden, where she is said to have been born from Adam’s Sin (Death’s father) and Eve’s Guilt (her mother; see image 1 above), to her dramatic destruction in Judgment Day (image 8), with copious quotations from the Bible and the Church Fathers to back up his facts. The protagonist of the story is referred to as “The Empress of the Sepulchers, The Avenger, and The Very Lady of All Humanity”. Muerte (death) is a female noun in Spanish; this fact allows Bolaños to create a female heroine, a very peculiar one.

Bolaños develops his central character thoroughly, in a lively and humoristic way, reflecting–and contributing to shape–the ambiguous relationship that Mexican culture has with death, marked by eroticism, morbid attraction, sadness and joy. Bolaños’s Death is irreverent, passionate and adventurous, and the book is a very early example of an American character-based novel, with a tongue-in-cheek tone and not lacking social criticism. It was criticized by Mexico’s Colonial literary critics as a piece of bad taste; nevertheless, it has been reevaluated by later scholars as a remarkable testimony of its time.

In the book –which is considered by many scholars to be one of the first Mexican novels–Death suffers, she falls in love, gets married several times (though her marriages were never consummated, as her husbands--all doctors--died upon entering the nuptial bed), and becomes angry when men forget about her continuous presence. The 1792 edition was accompanied by a series of illustrations (shown above)


Salvador Olguin


more at >

Thursday, October 29, 2009

Jorge Luis BORGES... drawing... Self Portrait




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Poignantly relating to self-portraits, Borges wrote in his The Art of Poetry:


To gaze at a river made of time and water
And remember Time is another river.
To know we stray like a river
and our faces vanish like water …

Sometimes at evening there's a face
that sees us from the deeps of a mirror.
Art must be that sort of mirror,
disclosing to each of us his face.



Sunday, October 18, 2009

Ramón María del Valle-Inclán...The Lamp Of Marvels...



A unique account by a great mystical poet of his search to realize Beauty, Truth, and Goodness in his life and in his art.


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Ramón del Valle Inclán (1866–1936) was Spanish writer and a member of the Generation of ‘98. Valle Inclán was deeply influenced by foreign literary trends, especially by modernismo. An eccentric who cultivated bizarre legends about himself, he published a collection of sensational, erotic tales, Femeninas (1895). He used himself as the model for the old libertine hero of his Sonatas (1902–1905), translated as The Pleasant Memoirs of the Marquis de Bradomín (1924). His symbolist aesthetic is expressed in his poetic works such as Aromas de leyenda (1907). Among his plays are Águila de blasón ("Eagle of Honor," 1907), in prose, and La Marquesa Rosalinda (1913) in verse. In his later works he satirized Spanish life in grotesque caricatures he called esperpentos, including Luces de Bohemia (1920).

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Saturday, August 29, 2009

PARAPHILIA MAGAZINE... issue 4



PARAPHILIA

Greek Meaning:

παρά --para: beside, near, past, beyond, above, contrary, resembling, apart from, irregular and abnormal.

φιλία --philia: a love that designates friendship, love between friends, a desire or enjoyment of an activity, as well as between lovers, family and community.

Medical Psychology Meaning: Sexual Fetishes.

Metaphysical Meaning: Friendship from Beyond.


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New issue containing work by the following;


JOHN COULTHART, ARNAUD LOUMEAU, JIM LOPEZ, MICHAEL K, MICHAEL ROTH, CHRIS
BRANDRICK, CLARE GODDEN-ROWLAND, MALCOLM ALCALA, SALENA GODDEN, THOMAS
EVANS, GENE GREGORITS, DOLOROSA, A.D. HITCHEN, CHRISTOPHER NOSNIBOR,
MAX REEVES, IAN MILLER, RICH FOLLETT, NICK TOSCHES, CHARLES CHRISTIAN,
ROBERT AGASUCCI, ELE-BETH LITTLE, ALFRED MURO, DAVID CONWAY, DARIUS
JAMES, DESTINY MCKEEVER, STEWART HOME, PATRICK WRIGHT, CRICKET
CORLEONE, RICHARD A. MEADE, RICK GRIMES, LITTLE SHIVA, HANK KIRTON,
CRAIG WOODS, JAD FAIR, CLAUDIA BELLOCQ, TOM GARRETSON, ANGELA SUZZANNE,
RON GARMON, DAVID GIONFRIDDO, KATE MACDONALD, MARY LEARY, CHRIS MORRIS




Enter PARAPHILIA, an unlicensed, underground enterprise that renounces rules, regulations, guidelines, genres, categories, and all other manmade shackles. Paraphilia recognizes that expression is a fundamental function of the human organism, and within these walls, it will only be presented in the purest, rawest, most unfettered form. The sole requirement for admission is an open mind, so do come in, we embrace your presence.


http://www.myspace.com/paraphiliamagazine


ISSUE 4





Saturday, July 4, 2009

The Afternoon of the Faun ...Stephane Mallarme

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The Afternoon of a Faun

***************


These nymphs I would perpetuate.

So clear
Their light carnation, that it floats in the air
Heavy with tufted slumbers.

Was it a dream I loved?
My doubt, a heap of ancient night, is finishing
In many a subtle branch, which, left the true
Wood itself, proves, alas! that all alone I gave
Myself for triumph the ideal sin of roses.
Let me reflect...

if the girls of which you tell
Figure a wish of your fabulous senses!
Faun, the illusion escapes from the blue eyes
And cold, like a spring in tears, of the chaster one:
But, the other, all sighs, do you say she contrasts
Like a breeze of hot day in your fleece!
But no! through the still, weary faintness
Choking with heat the fresh morn if it strives,
No water murmurs but what my flute pours
On the chord sprinkled thicket; and the sole wind

Prompt to exhale from my two pipes, before
It scatters the sound in a waterless shower,
Is, on the horizon's unwrinkled space,
The visible serene artificial breath
Of inspiration, which regains the sky.

Oh you, Sicilian shores of a calm marsh
That more than the suns my vanity havocs,
Silent beneath the flowers
of sparks, RELATE
'That here I was cutting the hollow reeds tamed
By talent, when on the dull gold of the distant
Verdures dedicating their vines to the springs,

There waves an animal whiteness at rest:
And that to the prelude where the pipes first stir
This flight of swans, no! Naiads, flies
Or plunges...'

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Inert, all burns in the fierce hour
Nor marks by what art all at once bolted
Too much hymen desired by who seeks the Ia:
Then shall I awake to the primitive fervour,
Straight and alone, 'neath antique floods of light,
Lilies and one of you all through my ingenuousness.

As well as this sweet nothing their lips purr,
The kiss, which a hush assures of the perfid ones,

My breast, though proofless, still attests a bite
Mysterious, due to some august tooth;
But enough! for confidant such mystery chose
The great double reed which one plays 'neath the blue:
Which, the cheek's trouble turning to itself
Dreams, in a solo long, we might amuse
Surrounding beauties by confusions false
Between themselves and our credulous song;
And to make, just as high as love modulates,
Die out of the everyday dream of a back
Or a pure flank followed by my curtained eyes,
An empty, sonorous, monotonous line.

Try then, instrument of flights, oh malign
Syrinx, to reflower by the lakes where you wait for me!
I, proud of my rumour, for long I will talk
Of goddesses; and by picturings idolatrous,
From their shades unloose yet more of their girdles:
So when of grapes the clearness I've sucked,
To banish regret by my ruse disavowed,
Laughing, I lift the empty bunch to the sky,
Blowing into its luminous skins and athirst
To be drunk, till the evening I keep looking through.

Oh nymphs, we diverse MEMORIES refill.
'My eye, piercing the reeds, shot at each immortal
Neck, which drowned its burning in the wave
With a cry of rage to the forest sky;
And the splendid bath of their hair disappears

In the shimmer and shuddering, oh diamonds!

I run, when, there at my feet, enlaced. Lie
(hurt by the languor they taste to be two)
Girls sleeping amid their own casual arms;
them I seize, and not disentangling them, fly
To this thicket, hated by the frivilous shade,
Of roses drying up their scent in the sun
Where our delight may be like the day sun-consumed.'
I adore it, the anger of virgins, the wild
Delight of the sacred nude burden which slips
To escape from my hot lips drinking, as lightning
Flashes! the secret terror of the flesh:
From the feet of the cruel one to the heart of the timid
Who together lose an innocence, humid
With wild tears or less sorrowful vapours.
'My crime is that I, gay at conquering the treacherous
Fears, the dishevelled tangle divided
Of kisses, the gods kept so well commingled;
For before I could stifle my fiery laughter
In the happy recesses of one (while I kept
With a finger alone, that her feathery whiteness
Should be dyed by her sister's kindling desire,
The younger one, naive and without a blush)
When from my arms, undone by vague failing,
This pities the sob wherewith I was still drunk.'

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Ah well, towards happiness others will lead me
With their tresses knotted to the horns of my brow:
You know, my passion, that purple and just ripe,

The pomegranates burst and murmur with bees;
And our blood, aflame for her who will take it,
Flows for all the eternal swarm of desire.
At the hour when this wood's dyed with gold and with ashes
A festival glows in the leafage extinguished:
Etna! 'tis amid you, visited by Venus
On your lava fields placing her candid feet,
When a sad stillness thunders wherein the flame dies.
I hold the queen!

O penalty sure...

No, but the soul
Void of word and my body weighed down
Succumb in the end to midday's proud silence:
No more, I must sleep, forgetting the outrage,
On the thirsty sand lying, and as I delight
Open my mouth to wine's potent star!

Adieu, both! I shall see the shade you became.

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Stephane Mallarme
Translation by Roger Fry