It Is High Time

It is high time to go back to the sun,
The fire of its alcohol purifies the air
We drink it down lustily in order to forget
The one who came in the night to tear open our heart
And to bid us farewell with her child’s hand,
A candle sometimes held in the air
Which she blows out regretfully
But without tarrying further
And without our seeing her disappear.

She is also the one we see smiling, standing
Amid the roses and the aster
In the full light of her gracefulness
Proud as she always was
She only lets herself be seen in dreams,
Too beautiful to let sorrow sleep
With so many false returnings
Which only bear witness to her absence.

she is there, really there,
What matter if sleep beguiles us,
We must burn out our eyes,
Endure the sweet su?ering,
Shake, lose, even, our reason,
Destroy anything that would come to destroy
The wonderful vision
Welcomed as one trembles
At the sight of a face seized by death
In the final splendour of its flowering.

She is there to keep watch over us,
Who only sleep to catch sight of her,
When through shame, through fear of our tears,
We flee outdoors at daytime,
Though there too we wait for her return,
And seek illicit refuge
In the bright sun’s stultifying blaze.

What the heart recognizes, reason denies.
A dream, but is anything more real than a dream?
Must we learn to live without dreaming
That the child, drawn toward the places she knew,
Comes into the rose garden, and nightly
Fills our bedroom with her pure flame
Which she brings toward us like an offering and a prayer?

These visions were only the delusions of forgetfulness,
Their charm, brutally broken, teaches us
That what we long for we do not have.
Finished, then, finished the illusion we maintained
She is not where we thought we saw her
Nor where we also will never be.
Silent in the depths of the ground
Who, except through willing deception,
Will ever hear us then
As in the time of our happy loves
When we were living people
Attentive to the slightest avowal on our lips
But free to speak or be still?

Pretending to ignore the laws of nature,
Resurrecting in dream the obliterated form,
Giving to illusion the virtues of a miracle,
Does any of this make death less triumphant?
At the very most, let us doubt that death can separate,
Or that the fact of being nowhere is a fact.

Irreparable break: let us take full measure of it.
Here we will be in sorrow our whole life through,
Our memories open like a wound,
It is here that we will find her once more
But a prisoner of her image, a recluse
In that all-consuming darkness
In which, to bind her misfortune to our own,
We dreamed of losing ourselves together,
The cables cut, and full of joy perhaps,
Had the step been less hard to take:
One with her in death,
Chosen as the perfect form of silence.

Coupling with nothing, nothing engenders nothing.
If we must live awake to living things,
Let us rather fear that our sorrow subside
As memories weaken and grow dull.
To su?er no more, seeing her no more
On those nights that welcomed her returning
Would be to let the heart grow poor,
Twice devastated, and alone.