Good Night, Good Day

[rejectomorph]

I do intend to get to bed before the light comes into the sky this morning. That may increase (however marginally) my chances of getting to sleep. Most likely, I'll lie there wide awake, but I want to give it a shot. I might even open the heater vent a bit, just to bring some languor-inducing warmth into this icy room. Sluggo will be sleeping, anyway. He never has trouble getting to sleep, even when I want him awake. So, on to the poetry, for the last time this year. (And once again, my apologies for the absence of the diacritical marks in the poet's name. I have no French font, and don't think that my obsolete keyboard would allow for its use in any case. Just imagine the accents over the first "e" in his first name and over the "e" that terminates his surname.)

ANGOISSE

by Stephane Mallarme


I do not come tonight to conquer your flesh,
O beast with the sins of the race, nor your impure
hair to stir up a melancholy tempest
by the fatal ennui that my kisses pour:

I ask but to sleep soundly in your bed
where no dreams lurk under curtains unknown to regret,
sleep you can savor past your black deceits,
you who know more of Nothing than the dead:

for Vice, corroding my nobility
inborn, brands both with its sterility,
but while there lives within your breast of stone

a heart no tooth of any crime can prod,
Wasted and pale and haunted by my shroud,
I flee, afraid to die if I sleep alone.

translated by C.F. MacIntyre

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Comments

[daisydumont.livejournal.com]

woof! what a poem. you can make that symbol, i think (alt 0233). right now, i need to find some more of his poems.

[rejectomorph]

I've posted one of his poems before, but it was quite a while ago, and I can't find it now, so I've re-posted it (in two translations) to the greatpoets community.

I didn't have any luck making the accent using alt 0233. I think I probably need to download the proper font before I can do such things.