And the flushed sunlight,
the wistful patterns of shadow
on gravel walks between tall elms
and broad-leaved lindens,
the stretch of country,
yellow and green,
full of little particolored houses,
and the faint intangible sky,
have lumped my soggy misery,
like clay in the brown deft hands of a potter,
and moulded a song of it.
Saint Germain-en-Laye
III
In the dark the river spins,
Laughs and ripples never ceasing,
Swells to gurgle under arches,
Swishes past the bows of barges,
in its haste to swirl away
From the stone walls of the city
That has lamps that weight the eddies
Down with snaky silver glitter,
As it flies it calls me with it
Through the meadows to the sea.
I close the door on it, draw the bolts,
Climb the stairs to my silent room;
But through the window that swings open
Comes again its shuttle-song,
Spinning love and night and madness,
Madness of the spring at sea.
IV
The streets are full of lilacs
lilacs in boys' buttonholes
lilacs at women's waists;
arms full of lilacs, people trail behind them through the moist night
long swirls of fragrance,
fragrance of gardens
fragrance of hedgerows where they have wandered
all the May day
where the lovers have held each others hands
and lavished vermillion kisses
under the portent of the swaying plumes
of the funereal lilacs.
The streets are full of lilacs
that trail long swirls and eddies of fragrance
arabesques of fragrance
like the arabesques that form and fade
in the fleeting ripples of the jade-green river.
Porte Maillot