THE CAROUSEL
Jardin du Luxembourg
With a canopy and its shade it turns
for a short while, this little herd
of many-colored horses, all from the land
that lingers long, then disappears.
Some, it’s true, are hitched to carriages,
yet all have courage in their faces;
an angry red lion goes with them
and now and then a white elephant.
Even a stag is there, as in the woods,
except he wears a saddle and on top of it
a little blue girl sits all buckled in.
And on the lion rides a boy in white
who holds on tightly with his small, hot hand,
while the lion bares teeth and tongue.
And now and then a white elephant.
And on the horses they come skimming past—
girls in bright dresses also, almost too old
already for this leaping of horses; in the midst
of the lunge they look up, off, over here—
And now and then a white elephant.
And it goes on and hurries to be over
and only circles and turns and has no goal.
A red, a green, a gray coming past,
a little, scarcely formed profile—.
And from time to time a smile, turned this way,
elated and starry-eyed as it expends itself
on this blind, breathless play …