Zone by Guillaume Apollinaire

Author:Guillaume Apollinaire [Apollinaire, Guillaume]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-59017-925-3
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2015-11-03T05:00:00+00:00

Vendémiaire

Men of the future remember my living

At a time when kingship was dying

One by one they died silent and sad

And became trismegists by the courage they showed

At the end of September with Paris so beautiful

Each night was a grapevine luscious and full

Spreading its light on the town and up high

The drunken birds of my glory pecked in the sky

At ripe stars awaiting the harvest of first light

One evening as I walked along the dark deserted quays

On my way back to Auteuil I heard a singing

A deep voice that sometimes fell silent

And I also heard voices down along the Seine

From far away in crystal clear laments

For a long time I listened to those songs and those cries

Awakened in the night by the romance of Paris

You towns of France and Europe and the world come flow

Into the thirsty chasm of my throat

Then I saw Paris already drunk among the vines

Harvesting the earth’s sweetest fruit

Those miraculous grapes that sang as they grew

And Rennes replied with Quimper and with Vannes

Here we are Paris Our people our houses

The clusters of our senses that the sun brought out

Give themselves up for your thirst O you greedy marvel

We bring you all the brains the cemeteries the garden walls

These cradles filled with cries that you will never hear

From upstream flowing down our thoughts O rivers

The ears of our schools and our hands at their apogee

With fingers straight up our hands make a belfry

And we bring you also our supple reason

Which mystery closes like the door to a dungeon

The courtly mystery of amorous gallantry

The fatal mystery fatal in another life

Double reason that goes far beyond beauty

And which neither Greece nor the East ever knew

The double reason of Brittany where bit by bit

The ocean waves cut off the ancient continent

And the northern towns answered merrily

O Paris here we are now like a living drink

The manly cities where the metal saints

Of our saintly factories chatter and sing

Our chimneys in the sky impregnate the clouds

As Ixion did long long ago

Factories mills workshops and hands

Where naked workers are like fingers

Making the real at so much per hour

We give you all that

And Lyons replied while the angels of Fourvière

Wove a new sky with silk made of prayer

Quench your thirst Paris with the divine words

My lips the Rhône and the Saône are murmuring

Always the same creed of his death born again

Divides here the saints and makes blood rain down

Happy rain O grief O warm drops

A child watches the windows as they open up

And to the drunken birds clustered heads are offered up

The towns of the Midi answered then

Noble Paris the only reason that still lives

Who determines our mood by your destiny

And you who pull back O Mediterranean Sea

Share our bodies like the Host broken in half

These very high loves and their orphan dance

Will turn into the pure wine O Paris that you love

And an infinite rattling coming from Sicily

Expressed in a flapping of wings these words

The grapes from our vineyards are harvested now

And these bunches of the dead whose elongated fruit

Taste of blood and of

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.