Parisian Nocturne

Roll, roll thy indolent flood, drearmost Seine—

Beneath thy bridges a sickly odor wraps amain

Many a corpse has drifted, rotten, horrid, lifeless,

The soul of which had for its own high executioner Paris.

But such a number you drag not in your icy waves,

So great as thoughts in me inspired by your face!

The Tiber has upon its shores ruins that make

The traveler rise toward a past long forsaken,

And which, covered with dark ivy and with lichen,

Appear, a grayish pile, between a lawn and lawn.

The merry Guadalquivir upon blond orange-trees laughs

And reflects, at night, some boleros that pass.

The Pactolus has its gold. The Bosphorus has its brink

Whither comes to make kief the lascivious odalisque.

The Rhine a burgrave is, and a troubadour

Is the Lignon, and a ruffian is the Adour.

The Nile, to the plaintive sound of its drowsing current,

Cradles with sweet dreams the sleep of mummies ancient.

The great Meschacebe, proud of its bulrushes sacred,

Lugs augustly by its gleaming bronze islets,

And sudden, fair with lightnings and roars, unsurpassed,

Splendidly falls downward in Niagaras vast.

The Eurotas, where the swarm of swans familiar

Mingles its white grace with mat green of laurels,

Under its clear sky streaked by a vulture’s flight,

Rhythmic and caressing, sings like a poet.

Lastly, Ganga, amid the lofty palm-trees waving

And ruddy padmahs, treads proudly and unhasting,

In trappings that are royal, whileas far-off the crowd

Along the temples go, a human swell, in shouts,

To the mighty clacking of cymbals made of wood,

And crouching, drawing out its oboe-notes of reed,

Awaiting the hour when the agile antelope leaps,

The yellow tiger with striped back stretches out and weeps.

—You, Seine, you have naught. Two quays, and nothing further,

Two grimy quays, sown from one end to the other

With frightful moldy books and a noteworthy mob

That makes rings on water and fishes with a bob.

Yes, but when comes evening, rarefying at last

The passersby grown heavy with sleeplessness or fast,

And sundown puts into the sky some ruddy blots,

How good it is for dreamers to descend from huts

And, elbows on the bridge of la Cité, facing

Notre-Dame, to daydream, heart and hair to the breeze!

Clouds, chased along by the wind nocturnal,

Race, cuprous and russet, in azure taciturn.

Upon the head of a king within a portal, the sun,

At the moment of death, puts a kiss of vermilion.

The swallow makes him away at the approach of evening

And you see flitting hither and yon the bat darkling.

All sound calms down now. Scarcely a vague noise

Tells you the town is there and raising in song its voice,

Licking all its tyrants and gnawing on its victims;

And now’s the dawn of thefts, loves and criminal mischiefs.

—Then, all at once, just like a tenor at wits’ end

Launching in the burnished air his cry sans friend,

His cry that weeps him there, and then goes on, and cries,

Somewhere there bursts forth the organ of Barbary:

It wails one of those airs, romances or polkas,

That as kids we tapped out on our harmonicas

And which make, slow or fast, entertaining or sad,

Vibrate the soul of women, of artists and the bad.

It’s badly done, it’s false, it’s horrible, it hurts,

And would give the fever to Rossini, for sure;

This laughter is drawn out, these sorrowings are minced;

Upon a treble clef impossible yet perched,

The notes have all a rheum and the c’s are a’s,

But no matter! you weep at hearing it that way!

But the mind, transported to the land of dreams,

Feels at those old chords flow within it streams;

Pity fills the heart and teardrops both the eyes,

And one would like to be able to taste the peace of the skies,

And in a harmony that’s strange and eke fantastic

Partaking of the musical and also of the plastic,

The soul, drowning them with light and with the singing,

Melds the organ’s tones with the sundown’s beams!

—And then the organ leaves, and then the noise abates

And drab night arrives and Venus starts to sway

Upon a gentle cloud deep in obscure skies;

Along the walls the gas-jets one by one are lighted.

And the star and torchlights make zigzags fantastic

In the river darker than the velvet of masks;

And the contemplator upon the high guardrail

By the air and years rusted like a nail

Leans, a prey to winds baneful from the abyss.

Thought, serenest hope, the most sublime ambition,

All, memory too, all is gone, takes flight,

And one is alone with Paris, the Current and Night!

—Sinister trinity! Of the dark hard doors!

Mane-Thecel-Phares of illusions no more!

You are all three of you, o Ghouls of our misfortune,

So terrible, that Man, drunken with the pain

That comes from piercing his flesh with your fingers spectral,

Man, a kind of Orestes yet lacking an Electra,

Underneath the fatality of your hollow face

Can do naught and goes straight to the awful precipice;

And you are also all three so very jealous

Of killing and offering unto the great Worm spouses

That one knows not which to choose among your horrors,

And if one less would fear to perish by the terrors

Of the Dark than under the Water deaf and deep,

Or in your farded arms, Paris, this world’s queen!

—And you onward flow Seine, and, always crawling,

You drag along in Paris your old serpent’s hauling,

An old serpent filthy, bearing toward your harbors

Your cargoloads of wood, of coal and of cadavers!

Paul Verlaine