Stéphane Mallarmé

The buried temple empties through its bowels, Sepulchral sewer spewing mud and rubies, Abominably some idol of Anubis, Its muzzle all aflame with savage howls. Or if the recent gas the wick befouls That bears so many insults, it illumines In haggard outline an immortal pubis Flying along the streetlights on its prowls. What wreaths dried out in cities without prayer Of night could bless like that which settles down Vainly against the marble of Baudelaire In the fluttering veil that girds her absence round, A tutelary poison, his own Wraith, We breathe in always though it bring us death.

Yesterday I found my pipe while pondering a long evening of work, of fine winter work. Thrown aside were my cigarettes, with all the childish joys of summer, into the past which the leaves shining blue in the sun, the muslins, illuminate, and taken up once again was the grave pipe of a serious man who wants to smoke for a long while without being disturbed, so as better to work: but I was not prepared for the surprise that this abandoned object had in store for me; for hardly had I drawn the first puff when I forgot the grand books I was planning to write, and, amazed, moved to a feeling of tenderness, I breathed in the air of the previous winter which was now coming back to me. I had not been in contact with my faithful sweetheart since returning to France, and now all of London, London as I had lived it a year ago entirely alone, appeared before my eyes: first the dear fogs that muffle one’s brains and have an odor of their own there when they penetrate beneath the casements. My tobacco had the scent of a somber room with leather furniture sprinkled by coal dust, on which the thin black cat would curl and stretch; the big fires! and the maid with red arms pouring coals, and the noise of those coals falling from the sheet-iron bucket into the iron scuttle in the morning—when the postman gave the solemn double knock that kept me alive! Once again I saw through the windows those sickly trees of the deserted square—I saw the open sea, crossed so often that winter, shivering on the deck of the steamer wet with drizzle and blackened from the fumes—with my poor wandering beloved, decked out in traveller’s clothes, a long dress, dull as the dust of the roads, a coat clinging damply to her cold shoulders, one of those straw hats with no feather and hardly any ribbons that wealthy ladies throw away upon arrival, mangled as they are by the sea, and that poor loved ones refurbish for many another season. Around her neck was wound the terrible handkerchief that one waves when saying goodbye forever.

I. ANCIENT OVERTURE OF HÉRODIADE The Nurse (Incantation) Abolished, and her frightful wing in the tears Of the basin, abolished, that mirrors forth our fears, The naked golds lashing the crimson space, An Aurora—heraldic plumage—has chosen to embrace Our cinerary tower of sacrifice, Heavy tomb that a songbird has fled, lone caprice Of a dawn vainly decked out in ebony plumes… Ah, mansion this sad, fallen country assumes! No splashing! the gloomy water, standing still, No longer visited by snowy quill Or fabled swan, reflects the bereaving Of autumn extinguished by its own unleaving, Of the swan when amidst the cold white tomb Of its feathers, it buried its head, undone By the pure diamond of a star, but one Of long ago, which never even shone. Crime! torture! ancient dawn! bright pyre! Empurpled sky, complicit in the mire, And stained-glass windows opening red on carnage. The strange chamber, framed in all the baggage Of a warlike age, its goldwork dull and faint, Has yesteryear’s snows instead of its ancient tint; And its pearl-gray tapestry, useless creases With the buried eyes of prophetesses Offering Magi withered fingers. One, With floral past enwoven on my gown Bleached in an ivory chest and with a sky Bestrewn with birds amidst the embroidery Of tarnished silver, seems a phantom risen, An aroma, roses, rising from the hidden Couch, now void, the snuffed-out candle shrouds, An aroma, over the sachet, of frozen golds, A drift of flowers unfaithful to the moon (Though the taper’s quenched, petals still fall from one), Flowers whose long regrets and stems appear Drenched in a lonely vase to languish there… An Aurora dragged her wings in the basin’s tears! Magical shadow with symbolic powers! A voice from the distant past, an evocation, Is it not mine prepared for incantation? In the yellow folds of thought, still unexhumed, Lingering, and like an antique cloth perfumed, Spread on a pile of monstrances grown cold, Through ancient hollows and through stiffened folds Pierced in the rhythm of the pure lace shroud Through which the old veiled brightness is allowed To mount, in desperation, shall arise (But oh, the distance hidden in those cries!) The old veiled brightness of a strange gilt-silver, Of the languishing voice, estranged and unfamiliar: Will it scatter its gold in an ultimate splendor, And, in the hour of its agony, render Itself as the anthem for psalms of petition? For all are alike in being brought to perdition By the power of old silence and deepening gloom, Fated, monotonous, vanquished, undone, Like the sluggish waters of an ancient pond. Sometimes she sang an incoherent song. Lamentable sign! the bed of vellum sheets, Useless and closed–not linen!—vainly waits, Bereft now of the cherished grammary That spelled the figured folds of reverie, The silken tent that harbored memory, The fragrance of sleeping hair. Were these its treasure? Cold child, she held within her subtle pleasure, Shivering with flowers in her walks at dawn, Or when the pomegranate’s flesh is torn By wicked night! Alone, the crescent moon On the iron clockface is a pendulum Suspending Lucifer: the clepsydra pours Dark drops in grief upon the stricken hours As, wounded, each one wanders a dim shade On undeciphered paths without a guide! All this the king knows not, whose salary Has fed so long this ag è d breast now dry. Her father knows it no more than the cruel Glacier mirroring his arms of steel, When sprawled on a pile of corpses without coffins Smelling obscurely of resin, he deafens With dark silver trumpets the ancient pines! Will he ever come back from the Cisalpines? Soon enough! for all is bad dream and foreboding! On the fingernail raised in the stained glass, according To the memory of the trumpets, the old sky burns, And to an envious candle it turns A finger. And soon, when the sad sun sinks, It shall pierce through the body of wax till it shrinks! No sunset, but the red awakening Of the last day concluding everything Struggles so sadly that time disappears, The redness of apocalypse, whose tears Fall on the child, exiled to her own proud Heart, as the swan makes its plumage a shroud For its eyes, the old swan, and is carried away From the plumage of grief to the eternal highway Of its hopes, where it looks on the diamonds divine Of a moribund star, which never more shall shine!

From golden showers of the ancient skies, On the first day, and the eternal snow of stars, You once unfastened giant calyxes For the young earth still innocent of scars: Young gladioli with the necks of swans, Laurels divine, of exiled souls the dream, Vermilion as the modesty of dawns Trod by the footsteps of the seraphim; The hyacinth, the myrtle gleaming bright, And, like the flesh of woman, the cruel rose, Hérodiade blooming in the garden light, She that from wild and radiant blood arose! And made the sobbing whiteness of the lily That skims a sea of sighs, and as it wends Through the blue incense of horizons, palely Toward the weeping moon in dreams ascends! Hosanna on the lute and in the censers, Lady, and of our purgatorial groves! Through heavenly evenings let the echoes answer, Sparkling haloes, glances of rapturous love! Mother, who in your strong and righteous bosom, Formed calyxes balancing the future flask, Capacious flowers with the deadly balsam For the weary poet withering on the husk.