Metropolitan

 

 

From the indigo straits to Ossian's seas, on pink and orange sands washed

by the vinous sky, crystal boulevards have just risen and crossed,

immediately occupied by poor young families who get their food at the

greengrocers'. Nothing rich.-- The city!

 

From the bituminous desert, in headlong flight with the sheets of fog

spread in frightful bands across the sky, that bends, recedes, descends,

formed by the most sinister black smoke that Ocean in mourning can

produce, flee helmets, wheels, boats, rumps.-- The battle!

 

Raise your eyes: that arched wooden bridge; those last truck gardens of

Samaria; those faces reddened by the lantern lashed by the cold night;

silly Undine in her noisy dress, down by the river; those luminous skulls

among the rows of peas,-- and all the other phantasmagoria-- the country.

 

Roads bordered by walls and iron fences that with difficulty hold back

their groves, and frightful flowers probably called loves and doves,

Damask damning langourously,-- possessions of magic aristocracies

ultra-Rhenish, Japanese, Guaranian, still qualified to receive ancestral

music-- and there are inns that now never open anymore,-- there are

princesses, and if you are not too overwhelmed, the study of the stars--

the sky.

 

The morning when with Her you struggled among the glitterings of snow,

those green lips, those glaciers, black banners and blue beams, and the

purple perfumes of the polar sun.-- Your strength.