Joyful, importunate sound of a melodious keyboard,
Speak—what do you want of me?
Have you come into my attic to heap further insult
Upon this defeated heart?
Joyful sound, come no more; pour intoxication on others;
Their life is a feast
That I have not disturbed; you’re troubling my distress,
My clandestine agony!
Imprudent, were do you come from? Doubtless a white hand,
A beautiful finger imprisoned
In rich jewels, has struck your reed
Of ebony and ivory;
Are you accompanying an angelic child
In her timid lesson?
Perhaps the somber rhythm and the melancholy tune
Betray her song to me.
No, I hear the muffled footsteps of a noisy crowd
In a narrow room;
It is whirling around, excited by the waltz,
Shaking the walls and roof.
Outside, confused sounds, cries and whinnying horses,
Flowers, slaves, torches;
The rich spread their joy and the poor moan
Ashamed in their rags!
Around me there is only a palace, indecent joy
Wealth, sumptuous nights,
Future, glory, honors; in the midst of that world
Poor and suffering I am
As if surrounded by the great, the king, the Holy Office
On the quémandero,13
All in pomp assembled to inhale a sacrifice,
A Jew on the brazero!
For everything overwhelms me: oblivion, misery, desire,
Are parceling out my days!
My amours embroidered the crêpe of my life with gold,
No more amours henceforth.
Poor girl! I was the one who dragged you
Along the path of pain;
But with a stronger poison, before it withered you.
You killed unhappiness!
Oh I, no more than a child, timid, weak, force-fed
With that sharpened blade
Have not sliced with this cowardly arm
My ulcerated breast!
I ruminate my disgrace; its shadow is pursued
By a customary regret.
What renders me so spineless and chains me to life?
Poor Job on his dung-heap.
HYMN TO THE SUN
There, in the sunken path, a solitary stroller
In my clandestine disgrace,
I come, suffering, and lie down on the ground
Like a brute beast
I nurse my hunger, head on a stone
Appealing to sleep
To staunch my burning eyelids a little;
I have exhausted my ration of sunlight!
Back there in the city, the sordid avarice
Of the king, over every Champart,14
Sunlight and void are sold to the human flock;
I have paid; I have my share!
But over everyone, all equal before you, just sun.
You shed your rays,
Which are no gentler on the face of an august prince
Than the dirty face of a beggar in rags.
Excerpt from a piece entitled
HAPPINESS AND UNHAPPINESS
He is a bird, the bard! He must remain wild;
By night in the branches, he twitters his song;
A muddy duck strutting on the river-bank
Saluting every rising or setting sun.
He is a bird, the bard! He must grow old austere,
Sober, poor, ignored, grim and careworn,
Singing for no one, and having nothing on earth
But a torn cape, a dagger and the skies!
But the bard today is a womanly voice,
A tight-fitting suit, a scrubbed pretty face,
A parrot on a perch, singing for Madame,
In a gilded cage, a pet canary;
He is marvelously fat, weeping warm tears
Over obligatory evils after a long meal,
Carrying an umbrella and swearing by his arms,
And, elixir in hand, invoking death,
Jewels, balls, flowers, horses, châteaux, slender mistresses
Are the materials of his leaden poems:
Nothing for poverty, nothing for the humble in distress;
Always insulting them in his velvet verses.
Please! Spare us your autocratic airs;
Good for you, if you glean wealth by the handful,
But
