J’attendais. Un grand bruit se fit. Les races mortes

  De ces villes en deuil vinrent ouvrir les portes,

  Et je les vis marcher ainsi que les vivants,

  Et jeter seulement plus de poussière aux vents.

  Alors, tours, aqueducs, pyramides, colonnes,

  Je vis l’intérieur des vieilles Babylones,

  Les Carthages, les Tyrs, les Thèbes, les Sions,

  D’où sans cesse sortaient des générations.

  Ainsi j’embrassais tout: et la terre, et Cybèle;

  La face antique auprès de la face nouvelle;

  Le passé, le présent; les vivants et les morts;

  Le genre humain complet comme au jour du remords.

  Tout parlait à la fois, tout se faisait comprendre,

  Le pélage d’Orphée et l’étrusque d’Évandre,

  Les runes d’Irmensul, le sphinx égyptien,

  La voix du nouveau monde aussi vieux que l’ancien.

  Or, ce que je voyais, je doute que je puisse

  Vous le peindre: c’était comme un grand édifice

  Formé d’entassements de siècles et de lieux;

  On n’en pouvait trouver les bords ni les milieux;

  À toutes les hauteurs, nations, peuples, races,

  Mille ouvriers humains, laissant partout leurs traces,

  Travaillaient nuit et jour, montant, croisant leurs pas,

  Parlant chacun leur langue et ne s’entendant pas;

  Et moi je parcourais, cherchant qui me réponde,

  De degrés en degrés cette Babel du monde.

  La nuit avec la foule, en ce rêve hideux,

  Venait, s’épaississant ensemble toutes deux,

  Et, dans ces régions que nul regard ne sonde,

  Plus l’homme était nombreux, plus l’ombre était profonde.

  Tout devenait douteux et vague, seulement

  Un souffle qui passait de moment en moment,

  Comme pour me montrer l’immense fourmilière,

  Ouvrait dans l’ombre au loin des vallons de lumière,

  Ainsi qu’un coup de vent fait sur les flots troublés

  Blanchir l’écume, ou creuse une onde dans les blés.

  Bientôt autour de moi les ténèbres s’accrurent,

  L’horizon se perdit, les formes disparurent,

  Et l’homme avec la chose et l’être avec l’esprit

  Flottèrent à mon souffle, et le frisson me prit.

  J’étais seul. Tout fuyait. L’étendue était sombre.

  Je voyais seulement au loin, à travers l’ombre,

  Comme un océan les flots noirs et pressés,

  Dans l’espace et le temps les nombres entassés!

  Oh! cette double mer du temps et de l’espace

  Où le navire humain toujours passe et repasse,

  Je voulus la sonder, je voulus en toucher

  Le sable, y regarder, y fouiller, y chercher,

  Pour vous en rapporter quelque richesse étrange,

  Et dire si son lit est de roche ou de fange.

  Mon esprit plongea donc sous ce flot inconnu,

  Au profond de l’abîme il nagea seul et nu,

  Toujours de l’ineffable allant à l’invisible…

  Soudain, il s’en revint avec un cri terrible,

  Ébloui, haletant, stupide, épouvanté,

  Car il avait au fond trouvé l’éternité.

  From Autumn Leaves

  The Slope of Reverie

  Obscuritate rerum verba sæpe obscurantur.

  Gervasius Tilbertensis.

  My friends, don’t delve into your favourite reveries,

  Don’t burrow through your soil growing flowers and trees,

  And when your vision conjures sleeping seas with hidden floors,

  Swim across their surfaces or play along their shores.

  Because thought is sombre! An invisible ravine

  Descends from the real world to the sphere that can’t be seen.

  The spiralling is deep and, when one is in its throes,

  Extends without pausing and increases as one goes,

  And, having sensed some great enigma one brushed past,

  One often comes back from the voyage there aghast!

  The other day it had just finished raining. For the spring,

  This year, is overrun with storms and buffeting.

  And brilliant May, enticing us the moment it appears,

  Has donned the mask of April and is laughing through its tears.

  I lifted up my window shades tinted like stained glass.

  I was looking at the elm trees, the flowers, and the grass

  Across the distant courtyard over which the sunlight played

  In raindrops – everything my open pane displayed

  And brought in from the garden, as if from above:

  The sounds of children playing and the sounds of birds in love.

  Everything was floating past my eyes in that light

  Streaming from the May sun and enchanting every sight:

  Paris and its lofty elms, domes, chimneys, pavement, glass,

  A diamond blinking on the tip of every blade of grass.

  I let myself relax into this triple harmony –

  Morning, spring, and childhood – made one in my retreat.

  The Seine, like me, had let its eddies and its streams

  Follow their own course, while the sun’s vermilion beams,

  Striking the water, simultaneously made

  The river turn to fog and my thoughts turn to dreams!

  And so, in my mind, I saw my friends surrounding me,

  Not confusedly, but in the way that one would see

  The loyal troupe gathering just like we always met:

  You, with your paintbrushes twinkling as if wet,

  You, with all those fiery verses you would fling,

  Everyone in a circle, watching, listening.

  All of us were there; I could see every face,

  Even those now living in some faraway place;

  And after them, departed friends began to arrive

  With all the same expressions as when they were alive.

  For a time I contemplated in my mind’s eye

  This family huddled round my hearth, and wondered why.

  Then I saw their trembling features warp and, gradually,

  Their foreheads turn pale and dissolve in front of me,

  And everyone, like a stream that flows into a sea,

  Became completely lost in a dark immensity.

  A nameless crowd! chaos! only footsteps, voices, eyes,

  Those whom one has never seen, those one can’t surmise.

  Everyone living! – cities buzzing more than trees

  In Amazon’s jungles or a hive full of bees,

  Caravans encamping in a desert that’s on fire,

  Sailors dispersed across the sea of God the Father,

  And, like a raft the swell is threatening to smother,

  Casting out a furrowed wake from one world to the other,

  Just as a spider casts a silver thread that floats

  In the breeze, suspended between two leafy oaks!

  The two poles! the world itself! the earth and sea below,

  Etnas with their blackened cores, Alps topped with snow,

  Everything at once: spring, winter, summer, fall,

  Valleys sloping down from land to sea, across it all,

  And changing into gulfs, seas engulfing the plains,

  Headlands expanding into cliffs and mountain chains,

  And continents – misty, green, or gold – which the sea

  In all of its expanses swallowed up unceasingly.

  Everything, like a landscape on a photographic plate,

  Was mirrored in its silky streams and ever-shifting state,

  Its passers-by, its fogs and mists adrift like down –

  Everything inside me walked and lived and moved around!

  And then, while attaching my increasingly keen

  Thought and vision onto all the outlooks on this scene

  The wind’s exhalations or the seasons’ steady pace

  Divulged to me each moment and all over the place,

  I suddenly saw – sometimes coming from the surge

  And foreign in appearance – other cities emerge

  Beside the living cities of the two worlds at this stage:

  Sepulchres in ruins from some long since vanished age

  With heaps of rubble, pyramids, and towers vast in size

  Bathing their feet in oceans and their heads in humid skies.

  Some cities were streaming from beneath another town

  Where the living, agitated, rustled up and down,

  And I could make out levels of Rome in three stages

  By tracing all the centuries up to our age’s.

  And while they were raising anxious voices all around,

  The cities of the living were beginning to resound

  With marching armies and the people’s murmuring.

  The cities of the past, like some mute and closed-up thing,

  With smokeless chimneys, emptied-out and echoless streets,

  Were quiet, and each seemed like a hive without its bees.

  I was waiting. Noises sounded. The dead woke in scores

  And nations of them came out to open their doors;

  I saw them walking like the living here and there

  Except that they were stirring up more dust in the air.

  Then aqueducts and pyramids, columns made of bronze –

  I saw the inner workings of the ancient Babylons,

  The Carthages, the Tyres, Thebes, Jerusalem,

  From which generations were streaming without end.

  I embraced it all: Cybele and Nature, too,

  The face of the old beside the face of the new,

  The living and the dead, yesteryear and today,

  All the human species as if on Judgement Day.

  Everyone spoke and understood each other speak:

  Evander’s Etruscan, Orpheus’s antique Greek,

  The sphinx of ancient Egypt, the runes of Irmensul,

  The voices of the new world as ancient as the old.

  What I saw – I doubt very much if speech like this

  Can paint it for you: it was like a large edifice

  Fashioned out of heaped-up centuries and places.

  At every level there were different nations and races;

  You couldn’t find its centre or determine its extent.

  Night and day, a thousand human workers came and went

  Passing by each other, climbing, banding and disbanding,

  Speaking their own languages and not understanding,

  While I, in search of someone with whom I might converse,

  Walked through every level of this Babel universe.

  In this horrific dream, along with night came a crowd,

  And both condensed and thickened together like a cloud,

  And in those regions through which no gaze can descend

  The shadows were increasing in proportion to the men.

  Everything was vague and uncertain; a gust

  Or breath of wind, shuttling back and forth in the dusk,

  Was the only thing disclosing distant valleys of light

  As if to show the swarm to me in all its eerie might:

  In the same way breezes blanch an ocean’s rolling sheet

  Of waves with foam, or part a field of harvest wheat.

  And soon the shadows gathered over me and revolved,

  The skyline vanished, and all forms in it dissolved;

  And man along with matter, being with the mind,

  Floated on my breath and sent a shiver down my spine.

  I was alone. The world was fleeing. Skies looked grim.

  I could only see, across the dark horizon’s rim,

  Rushing waves, like ocean swells, all over the place,

  Numerals piled up and inside time and space!

  Oh! that double ocean, that sea of space and time

  The human vessel crosses and recrosses all the time –

  I wished to sound its depths, and I wished to touch its sands,

  To look at it, to dig through it, to search through its expanse,

  That I might bring something rich and strange back to you,

  And tell you if its floors were rock or mud completely through.

  And so my mind dove downwards, past what it had known,

  Into that abyss where it swam naked and alone,

  Moving from what can’t be said to that which can’t be seen …

  Suddenly it came to its senses with a scream,

  Astonished, panting, horrified, attempting to break free,

  Because, in those depths, it had found eternity.

  Soleils couchants (II)

  Le jour s’enfuit des cieux; sous leur transparent voile

  De moments en moments se hasarde une étoile;

  La nuit, pas à pas, monte au trône obscur des soirs;

  Un coin du ciel est brun, l’autre lutte avec l’ombre,

  Et déjà, succédant au couchant rouge et sombre,

  Le crépuscule gris meurt sur les coteaux noirs.

  Et là-bas, allumant ses vitres étoilées,

  Avec sa cathédrale aux flèches dentelées,

  Les tours de son palais, les tours de sa prison,

  Avec ses hauts clochers, sa bastille obscurcie,

  Posée au bord du ciel comme une longue scie,

  La ville aux mille toits découpe l’horizon.

  Oh! qui m’emportera sur quelque tour sublime

  D’où la cité sous moi s’ouvre comme un abîme!

  Que j’entende, écoutant la ville où nous rampons,

  Mourir sa vaste voix, qui semble un cri de veuve,

  Et qui, le jour, gémit plus haut que le grand fleuve,

  Le grand fleuve irrité, luttant contre les ponts!

  Que je voie, à mes yeux en fuyant apparues,

  Les étoiles des chars se croiser dans les rues,

  Et serpenter le peuple en l’étroit carrefour,

  Et tarir la fumée au bout des cheminées,

  Et, glissant sur le front des maisons blasonnées,

  Cent clartés naître, luire et passer tour à tour!

  Que la vieille cité, devant moi, sur sa couche

  S’étende, qu’un soupir s’échappe de sa bouche,

  Comme si de fatigue on l’entendait gémir!

  Que, veillant seul, debout sur son front que je foule,

  Avec mille bruits sourds d’océan et de foule,

  Je regarde à mes pieds la géante dormir!

  Setting Suns (II)

  The light flees from heaven. Beneath the sky’s transparent veil

  A star ventures out now and then, dim and pale.

  The night, step by step, climbs to evening’s throne and fills

  Some sky with brown, while some struggles with the dark;

  And already, following the sun’s violet arc,

  The grey dusk is dying up along the blackened hills.

  And over there the city with its starry panes alit,

  With its vast cathedral and the steeples under it,

  The towers of its palaces and prisons, every wall

  And clockface, every tall and sombre fortress too,

  Laid out on the skyline like the teeth of a saw –

  The city with its thousand roofs cuts the sky in two.

  Take me to some high ledge of a tower, like a cliff’s,

  From which the town opens up beneath like an abyss!

  That I may hear this city through which we make our way

  Compose itself or cry out, like a widow, in its pains,

  Or groan even louder than the river in the day,

  The great river, struggling against the bridges’ chains!

  That I may see, coming into view as starry streaks,

  The sudden sparks of carriages crossing in the streets,

  The people winding through the narrow alleyways,

  The smoke dissolve above the chimneys like black foam,

  And, gliding onto the façades of blazoned homes,

  A hundred lights be born, grow bright, and pass away!

  And may the ageing city lie and stretch itself out

  In front of me, and may a sigh escape from its mouth

  As though a groan of weariness were rising from the street!

  May I stand watch alone there on the city’s brow

  With all the oceanic noises of the crowd

  And look down on the giant sleeping at my feet!

  Soleils couchants (VI)

  Le soleil s’est couché ce soir dans les nuées.

  Demain viendra l’orage, et le soir, et la nuit;

  Puis l’aube, et ses clartés de vapeurs obstruées;

  Puis les nuits, puis les jours, pas du temps qui s’enfuit!

  Tous ces jours passeront; ils passeront en foule

  Sur la face des mers, sur la face des monts,

  Sur les fleuves d’argent, sur les forêts où roule

  Comme un hymne confus des morts que nous aimons.

  Et la face des eaux, et le front des montagnes,

  Ridés et non vieillis, et les bois toujours verts

  S’iront rajeunissant; le fleuve des campagnes

  Prendra sans cesse aux monts le flot qu’il donne aux mers.

  Mais moi, sous chaque jour courbant plus bas ma tête,

  Je passe, et, refroidi sous ce soleil joyeux,

  Je m’en irai bientôt, au milieu de la fête,

  Sans que rien manque au monde, immense et radieux!

  Setting Suns (VI)

  The sun this evening has set among the clouds.

  Tomorrow there’ll be storms, and the evening, and the night,

  Then dawn, with its glimmering mists slowly clearing,

  Then the nights, then the days – time’s footsteps disappearing.

  These days will pass away; they will pass away in crowds

  From the faces of the oceans and the faces of the hills,

  From the silver rivers and the forests which sway

  Like a requiem blending with the souls we care for still.

  And the faces of the waters, and the foreheads of the hills

  Wrinkled without having grown old, and evergreens

  Will keep rejuvenating. The streams will ceaselessly

  Take water from the mountaintops and give it to the sea.

  But I, bending lower with the weight of each day,

  Am passing by, and – chilled again in this ecstatic sun –