Rower

Leaning against a great river, infinitely my sculls

Wrest me with regret away from the smiling shores;

Soul with weighty hands, filled up with the oars,

The very sky must cede unto the blades’ slow knell.

Heart hardened, eyes distract from the beauties I beat,

Letting all around me die wave on wave in circles,

I would in widemost swaths break down the famous world

Made of leaves and fire that quite low I sing.

Trees over which I pass, ample and naïve moiré,

Water of skilled work painted, and peace of endings old,

Tear them, little boat, impose on them a fold

That runs to abolish all the great calm its memory.

Never, charms of day, never have your graces

Suffered so much from a rebel essaying his defense:

But, even as suns from childhood have me taken,

I remount unto the source where ceases even a name.

Vainly all the nymph continuous and huge

Prevents with purest arms my members all harassed;

I shall slowly break a thousand ties o’er-iced

And the silver barbs of her puissance nude.

This secret noise of waters, all this river strangely

Place my gilded days beneath a band of silk;

Nothing now more blindly the antique joy wears thin

Than noise of equal flight and of naught that’s changing.

‘Neath annulated bridges, deep water is my floorway,

Vaults filled up with wind, with murmur and with night,

They run upon a forehead that with ennui they smite,

But whose prideful bone is harder than their doorway.

Their night passes slowly. The soul beneath them lowers

Its sensitivest suns and its eyelids prompt,

When, by the movement that covers me in rocks,

I sink down in defiance of so much lazy azure.

Paul Valéry