Childhood

 

I.

 

That idol, black eyes and yellow mop, without parents or court, nobler

than Mexican and Flemish fables; his domain, insolent azure and verdure,

runs over beaches called by the shipless waves, names ferociously Greek,

Slav, Celt.

 

At the border of the forest-- dream flowers tinkle, flash, and flare,--

the girl with orange lips, knees crossed in the clear flood that gushes

from the fields, nakedness shaded, traversed, dressed by rainbow, flora, sea.

 

Ladies who stroll on terraces adjacent to the sea; baby girls and

giantesses, superb blacks in the verdigris moss, jewels upright on the

rich ground of groves and little thawed gardens,-- young mothers and big

sisters with eyes full of pilgrimages, sultanas, princesses tyrannical of

costume and carriage, little foreign misses and young ladies gently unhappy.

 

What boredom, the hour of the "dear body" and "dear heart."

 

 

II.

 

It is she, the little girl, dead behind the rosebushes.

 

--The young mamma, deceased, comes down the stoop.-- The cousin's

carriage creaks on the sand.-- The little brother (he is in India!)

there, before the western sky in the meadow of pinks. The old men who

have been buried upright in the rampart overgrown with gillyflowers.

 

Swarms of golden leaves surround the general's house. They are in the

south.-- You follow the red road to reach the empty inn. The chateau is

for sale; the shutters are coming off. The priest must have taken away

the key of the church. Around the park the keepers' cottages are

uninhabited. The enclosures are so high that nothing can be seen but the

rustling tree tops. Besides, there is nothing to be seen within.

 

The meadows go up to the hamlets without anvils or cocks. The sluice gate

is open. O the Calvaries and the windmills of the desert, the islands and

the haystacks!

 

Magic flowers droned. The slopes cradled him. Beasts of a fabulous

elegance moved about. The clouds gathered over the high sea, formed of an

eternity of hot tears.

 

 

III.

 

In the woods there is a bird; his song stops you and makes you blush.

 

There is a clock that never strikes.

 

There is a hollow with a nest of white beasts.

 

There is a cathedral that goes down and a lake that goes up.

 

There is a little carriage abandoned in the copse or that goes running

down the road beribboned.

 

There is a troupe of little actors in costume, glimpsed on the road

through the border of the woods.

 

And then, when you are hungry and thirsty, there is someone who drives

you away.

 

 

 

IV.

 

I am the saint at prayer on the terrace like the peaceful beasts that

graze down to the sea of Palestine.

 

I am the scholar of the dark armchair. Branches and rain hurl themselves

at the windows of my library.

 

I am the pedestrian of the highroad by way of the dwarf woods; the roar

of the sluices drowns my steps. I can see for a long time the melancholy

wash of the setting sun.

 

I might well be the child abandoned on the jetty on its way to the high

seas, the little farm boy following the lane, its forehead touching the sky.

 

The paths are rough. The hillocks are covered with broom. The air is

motionless. How far away are the birds and the springs! It can only be

the end of the world ahead.

 

 

V.

 

Let them rent me this whitewashed tomb, at last, with cement lines in

relief,-- far down under ground.

 

I lean my elbows on the table, the lamp shines brightly on these

newspapers I am fool enough to read again, these stupid books.

 

An enormous distance above my subterranean parlor, houses take root, fogs

gather. The mud is red or black. Monstrous city, night without end!

 

Less high are the sewers. At the sides, nothing but the thickness of the

globe. Chasms of azure, wells of fire perhaps. Perhaps it is on these

levels that moons and comets meet, fables and seas.

 

In hours of bitterness, I imagine balls of sapphire, of metal. I am

master of silence. Why should the semblance of an opening pale under one

corner of the vault?