A Translation of Stéphane Mallarmé
The moon saddened. Seraphim in tears
Dreamed, the bow to their fingers, in the calm of flowers
Vaporous, torn from mordant viols
Of white sighs gliding on the azure of corollas.
—It was the blessed day of your first kiss.
My fantasy whose love in martyring me persists
Got drunk knowingly on the perfume of sadness
That’s left even past regret and past distress,
The culling of a dream in a heart that had it culled.
I wandered thus, eyes riveted on the pavement grown old
When with the sunlight in your hair, on the road
And in the evening, you came to me laughing it appeared
And I tried to see the pixie in a hat of luminosity
Who once in a spoiled child’s beautiful sleep
Passed, always did her unclosed hands offer
Snowing of white bouquets of perfumed stars.
