(no subject)

[proximoception]

Correspondences, Baudelaire/Richard Wilbur

Nature's a temple whose living colonnades
Breathe forth a mystic speech in fitful sighs;
Man wanders among symbols in those glades,
Where all things watch him with familiar eyes.

Like dwindling echoes gathered far away
Into a deep and thronging unison
Huge as the night or as the light of day,
All scents and sounds and colors meet as one.

Perfumes there are as sweet as the oboe's sound,
Green as the prairies, fresh as a child's caress,
—And there are others, rich, corrupt, profound

And of an infinite pervasiveness,
Like myrrh, or musk, or amber, that excite
The ecstasies of sense, the soul's delight.


Sea Breeze, Mallarme/WIlbur

The flesh grows weary. And books, I’ve read them all.
Off, then, to where I glimpse through spray and squall
Strange birds delighting in their unknown skies!
No antique gardens mirrored in my eyes
Can stay my sea-changed spirit, nor the light
Of my abstracted lamp which shines (O Night!)
On the guardian whiteness of the empty sheet,
Nor the young wife who gives the babe her teat.
Come, ship whose masts now gently rock and sway,
Raise anchor for a stranger world! Away!

How strange that Boredom, all its hopes run dry,
Still dreams of handkerchiefs that wave good-bye!
Those gale-inviting masts might creak and bend
In seas where many a craft has met its end,
Dismasted, lost, with no green island near it...
But hear the sailors singing, O my spirit!


Mirabeau Bridge, Apollinaire/Wilbur

Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine
Must I recall
Our loves recall how then
After each sorrow joy came back again
Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay

Hands joined and face to face let's stay just so
While underneath
The bridge of our arms shall go
Weary of endless looks the river's flow

Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay

All love goes by as water to the sea
All love goes by
How slow life seems to me
How violent the hope of love can be

Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay

The days the weeks pass by beyond our ken
Neither time past
Nor love comes back again
Under the Mirabeau Bridge there flows the Seine

Let night come on bells end the day
The days go by me still I stay


Invitation to the Voyage, Baudelaire/Wilbur

My child, my sister, dream
How sweet all things would seem
Were we in that kind land to live together

And there love slow and long,
There love and die among
Those scenes that image you, that sumptuous weather.

Drowned suns that glimmer there
Through cloud-disheveled air
Move me with such a mystery as appears

Within those other skies
Of your treacherous eyes
When I behold them shining through their tears.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

Furniture that wears
The luster of the years
Softly would glow within our glowing chamber,

Flowers of rarest bloom
Proffering their perfume
Mixed with the vague fragrances of amber;

Gold ceilings would there be,
Mirrors deep as the sea,
The walls all in an Eastern splendor hung--

Nothing but should address
The soul's loneliness,
Speaking her sweet and secret native tongue.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

See, sheltered from the swells
There in the still canals
Those drowsy ships that dream of sailing forth;

It is to satisfy
Your least desire, they ply
Hither through all the waters of the earth.

The sun at close of day
Clothes the fields of hay,
Then the canals, at last the town entire

In hyacinth and gold:
Slowly the land is rolled
Sleepward under a sea of gentle fire.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.


Anteros, Nerval/Wilbur

You ask me why I bear such rage in heart,
And on this pliant neck a rebel head;
Of great Antaeus' lineage was I bread;
I hurl to heaven again the Victor's dart.
Yea, I am one the Avenger God inspires;
He has marked my forehead with the breath of spite;
My face, like Abel's bloody -- alas -- and white,
Burns red by turns with Cain's unsated fires!

The last, Jehovah! who by thy powers fell
And cried against thy tyranny from hell
Was Bel my grandsire, or my father Dagon.

By them thrice baptized in Cocytus' water,
I guard alone the Amalekite my mother,
And sow at her feet the teeth of the old dragon.