Alcools: Poems

The Harvest Month

The Harvest Month Futurity remember me I lived in the denouement of kings They perished singly sadly silently Thrice-heroic they became mythology Paris was beautiful in late September Every night became a vine whose leaves Lavished their brightness on the town and air Ripening stars awaited the harvest dawn Plundered by drunken birds of fame One evening walking by the empty piers Going home to Auteuil I heard a voice Gravely singing and in the pauses Other voices answered clearly The entire length of the Seine was singing I listened to their sorrows for a long time All of Paris awoke and sang all night Cities of France and Europe and the world I'm thirsty Come to me cascade into my enormous throat And then I saw that Paris was already drunk Harvesting the softest vineyard in the world Miraculous grapes were singing in the vines Rennes with Quimper and with Vannes responded Paris we are here Our houses our people The sun-begotten grapes of our senses Martyr themselves to quench your miracle We bring you our brains our boneyards and barriers Mewling cradles you will never hear Upstream and downstream our thoughts o rivers 161 Les oreilles des ecoles et nos mains rapprochees Aux doigts allonges nos mains les clochers Et nous t'apportons aussi cette souple raison Que le mystere clot comme une porte la maison Ce mystere courtois de la galanterie Ce mystere fatal fatal d'une autre vie Double raison qui est au-dela de la beaute Et que la Grece n'a pas connue ni 1'Orient Double raison de la Bretagne ou lame a lame L'ocean chatre peu a peu 1'ancien continent Et les villes du Nord repondirent gaiement O Paris nous voici boissons vivantes Les viriles cites ou degoisent et chantent Les metalliques saints de nos saintes usines Nos cheminees a ciel ouvert engrossent les nuees Comme fit autrefois 1'Ixion mecanique Et nos mains innombrables Usines manufactures fabriques mains Ou les ouvriers nus semblables a nos doigts Fabriquent du reel a tant par heure Nous te donnons tout cela Et Lyon repondit tandis que les anges de Fourvieres Tissaient un ciel nouveau avec la soie des prieres Desaltere-toi Paris avec les divines paroles Que mes levres le Rhone et la Saone murmurent Toujours le meme culte de sa mort renaissant Divise ici les saints et fait pleuvoir le sang Heureuse pluie 6 gouttes tiedes 6 douleur Un enfant regarde les fenetres s'ouvrir Et des grappes de tetes a d'ivres oiseaux s'offrir Les villes du Midi repondirent alors Noble Paris seule raison qui vis encore Qui fixes notre humeur selon ta destinee Et toi qui te retires Mediterranee 162 The ears of schools our hands together Fingers uplifting our steeple hands And also we bring a tractable reason Cloistered by mystery as by a gate Chivalrous elegant mystery Fatal mystery fatal other life Double reason far beyond beauty Inaccessible to the Greek or Oriental Only Brittany wave by wave can reason Where ocean slowly gelds the ancient world And the cities of the North responded gaily O Paris we are alcohol come to life Virile cities of metallurgic sainthood Singing and rattling in the forge of saintliness Our smokestacks fill the clouds with babies As once did Ixion on the wheel in Hell Our numberless hands Mills works factories hands Naked as fingers naked workers Fabricate the real world for wages This we give And Lyon responded while the angels of Fourvieres Wove a silken novel sky out of prayers Paris quench yourself with holy words From my lips the rivers Rhone and Saone Forever the same rebirth of death Divides the saints and the blood rains down O happy rain and warmth and despondency An infant sees the windows opening And clusters of heads exposed to drunken birds And then the cities of the South responded Noble Paris o Reason's sole survivor Fastening our tempers to your fate And you also ebbing Mediterranean 163 Partagez-vous nos corps comme on rompt des hosties Ces tres hautes amours et leur danse orpheline Deviendront 6 Paris le vin pur que tu aimes Et un rale infini qui venait de Sicile Signifiait en battement d'ailes ces paroles Les raisins de nos vignes on les a vendanges Et ces grappes de morts dont les grains allonges Ont la saveur du sang de la...