I
O our joy
which is illumined and floats on the wind in silken air.
Here is the gentle house and its light gable,
the garden and the orchard.
Here is the bench, beneath the apple trees
where white springtime is shed
with slow caressing petals.
Here are flights of luminous woodpigeons
hovering, like omens,
in the clear sky of the country.
Here, like kisses fallen on earth
from the mouth of the fragile azure,
two blue lakes simple and pure,
artlessly bordered by innocent flowers.
O the splendour of our joy and of ourselves,
in this garden where we live on with our insignia.
This barbarous head where monsters writhe,
bound together by tooth and claw,
in a mad tumult of blood, of ardent cries,
of wounds and mouths that tear each other,
that was me, before you were mine,
O, you the new, you the ancient one!
You, who came to me, from the depths of your eternity
bearing in your hands passion and goodness.
I feel in you the self-same depths
that in my own self slumber,
and in our thirst to remember
drink the echo, where our pasts come together.
Our eyes must have wept at the same hour
without our knowing, during childhood;
with the same fears, same joys,
same sparks of confidence;
for I am linked to you by the unknown
that fixed me, once, from the depths of avenues
where my adventurer’s life was spent;
and, of course, had I looked closer,
I would have been able to see your eyes open
long ago, beneath their lids.
In the garden of our love, summer moves on:
a peacock of gold follows the avenue
and traverses the green lawn;
they gleam, our blue ponds, covered
with the white kiss of snowy water lilies;
along staggered rows our redcurrants form processions;
an insect prism inflames a flower’s heart;
wondrous undergrowth is marbled with gleams;
and, like airy bubbles, a thousand bees,
on clusters of silver, quiver along the vines.
The air is so beautiful it seems to shimmer;
beneath deep and radiant noontimes,
one would say it stirs into roses of light;
whilst, in the distance, the familiar roads
that stretch out like slow gestures, ruby red
to pearl the horizon, climbing towards the sun.
Surely, lovely summer’s diamond gown
can clothe no other garden with such brightness,
and this unique joy that blooms in our two souls,
in these bouquets of flame its own life recalls.