The Faun
Those nymphs, I want to capture them.
So clear
Their light incarnation, that it floats in air,
Drowsing in leafy slumber.
Was it a dream
I loved? The shapes of ancient night that seem
Vague end, alas, in branches, and I see
That I, and I alone, am offering me
In triumph the perfect frailty of roses.
Consider ...
whether your talk of women is
Inspired, faun, by your fabled senses.
In the cold, blue eyes of the chaster one
Like a tearful fountain, the illusion
Escapes, but then the other, when a breeze,
Warms you, is she sighing on your fleece?
But no] In this torpid swooning state
Of morning almost stifled by the heat,
My flute is the only water with its stops,
Sprinkling its harmonies about the copse
Watered with music, and the only breeze
Apart from the two pipes sound quickly empties
Before dispersing in the arid plain,
Is, on the horizon's unwrinkled line,
The serene and artificial exhalation,
Returning to the sky, of inspiration.
O Sicilian marshes that my vanity
Parches, so that suns are filled with envy,
Silent beneath your flowering sparks, RECOUNT
"That I was cutting hollow reeds, the amount
Talent would need, when on the glaucous gold
Of green with fountains on which vines take hold,
An animal whiteness seems to undulate,
And at the slow beginning of the flute
That flight of swans, no, naiads, runs away
Or dives ..."
At the fawn's time of day,
All burns, and the art by which the excess
Of hymen wished for by the one who searches
For la escaped is unnoticed, I shall wake
At the first transport, in an antique
Flood of light, lily, erect and alone,
And one of all of you, the innocent one.
Aside from the sweet nothings that are murmured,
The kiss, by which treachery is assured,
There is a bite mark on my breast, that was
Virgin till now. I can only suppose,
Due to some august tooth. But no more]
Only the elect know such things, taking for
Their confidant the vast twin reed beneath
The azure, that takes in the troubled breath
And in a solo dreams we were amusing
The beauty all around us, by confusing
It with our song ... and dreams of a love so high
That it can do without the back and thigh
Of ordinary dreams, the parts I know
And, with both my eyes shut tight, can follow,
A sonorous, vain, monotonous line.
Try then, you instrument of flights, malign
Syrinx, again to flower by the lake
Where you are waiting for me] I shall speak
Of goddesses at length, for I am proud
Of the fame I have in paintings with the crowd:
Making off with a girdle in a shadow,
Sucking the light out of some grapes, to show
I have no regrets. Lifing a grapeskin to blow
Into it, and look through it at the sky,
Avid for drink, and so the hours fly.
Nymphs, let us reinflate some MEMORIES.
"My eye makes holes among the reeds and pierces
Each immortal neck that would assuage
Its burning in water with a cry of rage;
And the splendid bath of hair that flashes
And shivers like a jewel vanishes.
I come running up, when on the ground
(Bruised by the taste of evil they have found
In being two) these sleepers are enlaced.
I seize, without disjoining them, and haste
To a bed of roses hated by the shade
That spill their perfumes in the sun and fade
Like our frolic, squandering the day."
I love you, anger of virgins, ecstacy
Of the sacred naked burden that would fly
My lips drinking in fire like a flash
Of lightning; secret terror of the flesh
From the cold one's feet to the heart of the timid,
That innocence gives up together, humid
With wild tears or less unhappy vapor.
"My crime is that, to overcome their terror,
I separated hair that was entangled
By kisses that the gods themselves had mingle
For just as I was about to smother
A laugh in the folds of one (Keeping the other
By just a finger, so she would take on
The rising fervor of her sister's passion,
The little unblushing one, the innocent
From my slack arms, by deaths vaguely spent,
The two, ungrateful forever, run away
And leave me sobbing drunk at the end of day. "
So what] Others will lead to happiness
My horns as with a noose tied by a tress.
You know, my passion, purple and ripening
Pomegranates burst, and bees are murmuring;
And that our amorous, responsive blood
Pours out desire in a constant flood.
At the hour when the woods are ash and gold,
The leaves that have lost all their color hold
A festival. It is Venus walking,
Etna, that sets off your lava sparkling
When sad dreams thunder or the flame is low.
I have the queen]
I shall be punished ...
No,
But the soul drained of words and this dull body
Are succumbing to the silence of midday.
Now I must sleep, forgetting blasphemy,
On the changing sand, and do what pleases me,
Opening my mouth to wine's consoling star]
Adieu, you two. I shall see the shade you are.