D'un printemps éternel, moi, l'éphémère

"Embraceable You" The Nat King Cole Trio

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkF3WVN5ao8

I’ll reinvent the rose for you
For you are that rose which cannot be described
These few words at least in the order proper to her ritual
That rose which only words distant from roses can describe
The way it is with the ecstatic cry and the terrible sadness which it translates
From the stars of pleaure above love’s deep abyss

I will reinvent for youth rose of adoring fingers
Which create a nave as they interlace but whose petals then suddenly fall away
I will reinvent for you the rose beneath the balconies
Of lovers whose only beds are their arms

The rose at the heart of sculpted stone figures dead without benefit of confession
The rose of a peasant blown to bits by a landmine in his field
The scarlet scent of a letter that has been “discovered”
In which nothing’s addressed to me neither the insult nor the compliment

Some rendezvous to which no one has come

An entire army in flight on a very windy day

A maternal footstep before prison-gates

A man’s song at siesta-time beneath the olive trees

A cock-fight in a mist-enshrouded countryside
The rose of a soldier cut off from his own home country

I’ll reinvent for you my rose as many roses
As there are diamonds in the waters of the seas
As there are past centuries adrift in the dust of the earth’s atmosphere
As there are dreams in just one childish head
As there can be reflections in one tear

--

Translated by Michael Benedikt from Louis Aragon