“It’s sweet, through mists, to watch a star / Born in the blue, lamp at the window, / Rivers of coal climbing the sky, / Moon pouring sorcery.” Courtesy of the Joseph Brooks Fair Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago.
To compose my sexless eclogues, I will
Bed down near the sky like the astrologers
And, neighbor to bell-towers, listen dreamily
To the somber wind-carried hymns.
Chin in hand, high up under the slant roof,
I’ll see the factories’ chatter and singsong,
Their chimneys and steeples, those masts of the city,
And the giant sky dreaming of eternity.
It’s sweet, through mists, to watch a star
Born in the blue, lamp at the window,
Rivers of coal climbing the sky,
Moon pouring sorcery. Up there
I’ll see springtime, I’ll see summer, fall,
And when winter comes with monotone snow,
I’ll close curtains and blinds
And build my fairy palaces in the night.
I’ll dream of blue bright horizons,
Of gardens, of fountains crying in alabaster,
Of kisses, birds singing evening and morning—
All that infantile Idyll. And
When Riot storms impotent at my window,
I won’t get up from my desk,
I’ll be plunged, voluptuous,
In calling forth Spring by force of will,
Prising sunshine from my heart, making
Of my burning thoughts a gentler weather.
The poem in its original French can be found here.