Spontaneous Truce

Tregua Espontánea

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

from 'Homer in Cuernavaca'
Tregua Espontánea
Insólita quietud en la troyana tierra! Bajo su toldo, Aquiles olvida sus pasiones; se oye temblar la lira, se escuchan sus canciones; y un hálito de paz adormece la guerra. El tumbo de las olas por el espacio yerra. Con discos y venablos juegan los mirmidones en los embarcaderos; y pacen los bridones loto y palustre apio traídos de la sierra. Yacen las negras flotas en muda formación. De una y otra hoguera suben las humaradas, y lejos se divisan las murallas de Ilión. Desata sus sandalias ocioso Agamemnón, y revista Odiseo sus naves embreadas, únicas que lucían proas de bermellón.
Spontaneous Truce
Unusual stillness in the land of Troy. Achilles at his tent forgets his passions: his harp shivers with songs: Patroclus listens. A breath of peace is warfare’s lullaby. Across the void the breakers’ rhythm spills; down by the ships, there’s sport for Myrmidons, discus and javelin; the stallions eat clover and marsh-parsley from the hills. The black flotillas lie drawn up in silence. Round and about, a few camp-fires are smoking; the distant walls, just visible, are Ilion's. Sandals slip off the feet of Agamemnon; Odysseus checks his hulls that need no caulking, the only ones with prows of bright vermilion.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

More poems by Alfonso Reyes...

German Tale

Cuento Alemán

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

Cuento Alemán
A la hora en que el gato salta sobre el tocino, en las vidrieras arde un rayo de oro fino y el Hombre de la Luna comienza su destino, en todas las botellas se oyó cantar el vino. Cantaba entre el bochorno de las obesas pipas que roncan y que sueñan que les saca las tripas el nocharniego pinche de las regias cocinas, terror de las doncellas y de las golosinas. Cantaba como canta el viento en las veletas, mientras los zafios duermen y velan los poetas. En sueños, la princesa, que lo oye cantar, en sueños se entregaba al gusto de bailar, mientras la dueña, gente de condición vulgar, se emborrachaba en sueños, que así suele pasar. El rey, como discreto, como persona honrada, el rey ... pues nada sueña porque no escucha nada. El rey tiene por barbas dorado vellocino, cual si las empapara en el dorado vino, y es su consuelo único y su mejor consejo tomar a cada rato un trago de lo añejo. Roba el tocino el gato. Ya trepa hacia la luna bebiendo las hebrillas de luz una por una: volar es cosa propia de la raza gatuna, si ayuda el plenilunio y ayuda la fortuna. En tanto, el regio parque se embriagaba de luna, y la luna se daba baños en la laguna. - Ay! viejo duendecito, prenda usía su vela! Diga: aquello que sube ¿es un gato que vuela? - ¡Ay, viejecita duende! ¿Para qué me desvela? ¿No sabe que es el Diablo que nos ronda y nos vela? ¡Bien haya el duendecito que todo lo sabía! A cada primavera, la barba le crecía. Desnuda la mañana su dorado puñal y canta el gallo de oro que hay en la catedral. Despierta la princesa rendida de bailar; la dueña, de beber; la dueña, de roncar. El rey, como discreto, como persona honrada, el rey ... pues nada sabe porque no sabe nada. La gente que a la plaza sale a ver el reló cuenta que el Holandés de las Botas pasó de noche por el pueblo, vaciando las botellas, hundiendo las tinajas y empreñando doncellas, y, como de costumbre, sopeaba su vino con su poco de queso, de lardo y de tocino. La princesa pariera un feísimo gato; la dueña confesara que se distrajo un rato; y el rey, como magnánimo, el rey, como sensato, iba desayunándose hasta limpiar el plato, y sin decir palabra gustaba del guisote, sorbía su cerveza, se chupaba el bigote; si bien no cabe duda que, para su capote, el rey ... nada pensaba, aunque nada se note. j Así tengáis salud y así tengáis fortuna, guardad a vuestras hijas del Hombre de la Luna! * * * * * * Hicieron estos versos cuatro monjes goliardos, de vidas vagabundas si de familias ricas, discípulos de Erígenas y alumnos de Abelardos - aunque no eran mancos, ni tuertos y ni cojos -, que, de beber, tenían volumen de barricas y cuatro caras como cuatro soles muy rojos.
German Tale
It was the hour the cat performs its bacon-grabbing spring, When across every window-pane fine gold is glittering, The hour the Magus of the Moon goes out adventuring: In every bottle, jug and flask, the wine was heard to sing. It sang among the flushes of the ample-bellied butts, That belch, and snore, and dream of being emptied of their guts By the nocturnal Scullion of the kitchens of the king, The dread of every kitchen-maid and dainty little thing. It sang the way the wild wind sings in the banners at the gate, While yokels take their beauty-sleep, and poets watch and wait. All in her dreams the princess heard the wine’s alluring chants; All in her dreams she yielded to the pleasures of the dance. She had a base-born chaperone, of very low degree, Who dreamed – it’s fairly normal – she was on a drunken spree. The king’s a man of honour, a discreet and upright king, The king – he dreams of nothing, for he doesn’t hear a thing. The king had grown a golden fleece that hung beneath his chin: Perhaps he kept a golden wine to marinade it in. This was his wisest counsel, this consoled him last and first: To swig whenever possible a bottle of the worst. The cat has pinched the bacon! and towards the moon it’s gone, Soars up, and drinks the little wisps of moonbeam, one by one: For flying is a special skill of all the feline band, Provided that good fortune and the full moon lend a hand. The royal park was all the while enraptured with the moon, Who took her time, enjoyed herself, and bathed in the lagoon. “Oho, my little pixie-man! Be waking, sir, stand by! Tell me, is that a flying cat that soars across the sky?” “Oho, my little elf, and would you rouse me? Can’t you tell, It’s the Devil haunts and harries us, the Devil come from hell.” “Protect us, little pixie-man!” He knew the whole affair; His beard grew long, and longer still, when spring was in the air. The daybreak from her scabbard drew her golden snickersnee; Loud crowed the golden cockerel in the Minster sacristy. The princess woke and rubbed her eyes, worn out from her contortions; The chaperone, from bibulous and stertorous exertions. The king’s a man of honour, a discreet and upright king, The king – the king knows nothing, for he doesn’t know a thing. The folk who saunter in the Square to view the clock, they say It was the Flying-Dutchman-Puss-in-Boots who passed this way. He went about the town at night, and drained the bottles dry, He emptied all the demijohns, and made the maidens cry; And, following the custom, in the tavern sat a-sipping Of his wine, with modest quantities of bacon, cheese and dripping. The princess was delivered of a very ugly cat; The chaperone was negligent, she took the blame for that; The king, a noble-hearted and sagacious man of state, Continued with his breakfast and completely cleared his plate; He supped his mild and bitter ale, and sucked his whiskered septum, And ate his meal in silence, not a single word escaped him. And there’s no doubt about it, that between himself and he, The king had not one thought at all! No comment – let it be. Here’s wishing you the best of health, the greatest good fortune, And keep your daughters locked away from the Magus of the Moon! * * * * * * * * Four monks composed these verses and they all were Goliards, They lived the life of vagrants, though their families were wealthy, Disciples of John Duns’s, acolytes of Abelard’s (Though none of them was maimed, or squinty-eyed, or that unhealthy); They had a gross of drinking-vats, a cubic chain of tuns, And four tomato faces like a clutch of scarlet suns.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Trees

Árboles

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

Árboles
Los álamos y los sauces, los enebros, los encinos, los robles, los abedules, hayas, mangles, cedros, pinos… Árboles, árboles, árboles, parasoles de beduinos, o policías formados al borde de los caminos. Trocad las hojas, los frutos; equivocad los destinos, que no es la pera en el olmo cifra de los desatinos. Que yo sé de algún rosal que mudó rosas por trinos, y sé de los italianos que acaban en argentinos. Cuando se nos canse Dios de leyes, normas y sinos, hará de los vinos panes, hará de los panes vinos.
Trees
Cedars, beeches and birches, mangroves, various conifers, willows, ilex and quercus, poplars and pines and junipers... Trees, trees, trees, parasols for the badawi, or a line of police, a border along the highway. Barter your leaves and your fruit; mix and mistake your destinies: pears on an elm are not always a mark of madnesses. I know a rosebush whose roses were traded for chirrups and trills, and people in Buenos Aires who come from the Apennine Hills. When God is weary of orders, of laws and boundary-lines, he’ll make the wines into bread-loaves and the bread-loaves into wines.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Trojan Genealogy

Genealogías troyanas

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

from 'Homer in Cuernavaca'. 'Alfonso Reyes Miracle of Mexico': Shearsman Books
Genealogías troyanas
Zeus lo engendró, lo hubo alguna de las Pléyades: tal es la dignidad de Dárdano el epónimo. Su vástago, Erictonio, en Dardania fue rey - a - des- ¬pecho de quien lo toma por su ateniense homónimo. Su hijo Tros, el padre de Ilo, impuso ley - a – des ¬perdigadas comarcas de aquel lugar anónimo; y de Tros y de no heredó la epopeya - des- pués los nombres de “iliano” y “troyano” el sinónimo. Ilo tuvo, entre otros, un nieto ilustre: Príamo, viejo rey de la Ilíada, decente aunque polígamo. Crió cincuenta príncipes; mas Paris, mala pécora, le salió mujeriego y vano y sin escrúpulo ... - Puedo seguir; no sigo: me canso del esdrújulo y, cerrando los párpados, dejo caer la péñola.
Trojan Genealogy
Zeus begat Dardanus out of a Pleiad. He’s god-fathered, star-mothered Hero Eponymous. Next Erichthonius inherited Troy, a dis- creet distance off from his Athens homonymus. Tros, before Ilus, a King and a lawyer, dis- pensed honest rule in his broad, yet anonymous, Troad. The Iliad’s vast epopoiia des- cribes Troy, or ‘Ilium’: these are synonymous. Ilus’s grandson, King Priam the glorious, sired fifty princes: not primly uxorious! One, though, was Paris, the vain Alexander, a rotten, unscrupulous heel and philanderer... Stop, superfeminines! Done my full complement... sated and somnolent, sheathe my small implement.
'Esdrújulo' means a word stressed on the antepenultimate!

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Complex

Complejo

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

Complejo
Amigos, dondequiera que voy me sigue un oso, Un oso que se ve con el rabo del ojo. Ni soporta ser visto de frente, ni lo puedo descubrir cuando quiero mirado en el espejo. No se oyen sus pasos, porque van con los míos. Es como una amenaza constante: es un testigo. Nada busca; pero me tiene medio loco saber que dondequiera que voy me sigue un oso.
Complex
My friends, no matter where I go I’m followed by a bear. He’s only glimpsed obliquely by a sneaky sidelong glance, He won’t permit a frontal view, he has no tolerance; I may seek him in the mirror, but I never see him there. I cannot hear his footsteps: when I tread, he’s treading too: A constant threat, a witness to whatever I may do. He isn’t after anything; it fairly spooks me, though, To know I’m followed by a bear, no matter where I go.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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A Metaphor

Una Metáfora

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

from 'Homer in Cuernavaca'
Una Metáfora
“Las cigarras de voz de lirio”, dice Homero... Le pesa al preceptista, le duele al traductor. La audacia del poético y voluntario error de escolios y de notas ha juntado un rimero. Algo hay en Apolonio que es del mismo acero, y algo en el viejo Hesíodo que tiene igual sabor. No creo que se pueda decir nada mejor, y juzgue cada uno lo que dicte su fuero. ¿Pues no ha osado un moderno hablarnos del clamor rojo de los clarines, y no es valedero si otro habla del negro redoble del tambor? Transporte sensorial, Vocales de color, Sinestesia - perdónese el terminajo huero -, Suprarrealidad, Cantos de Maldoror ... ¡Se asusta el avispero! Mientras zozobra el crítico, digamos con valor: - ¡Bravo por “las cigarras de voz de lirio”, Homero!
A Metaphor
‘The lily-voiced cicadas’ is a saying found in Homer: it gives the teacher problems, the translator melancholia. The boldness of this lyrical and voluntary bloomer has piled up quite a congeries of glosses and of scholia. There’s a tag of Apollonius that has the selfsame mettle, and something in old Hesiod whose tang might correlate. I don’t believe that any turn of phrase can turn out better, let each of us pass judgement as our conscience may dictate. Didn’t some daring modern type bring up the ‘scarlet clamour of trumpets’? Didn’t someone else, with perfect sense and grammar, go on about the black pounding rhythm of the drummer? The transference of senses and the colours of the vowels - excuse the hollow jargon if I talk of synaesthetics - The Songs of Maldoror; the surreal, the super-real... We’re stirring up the hornets’ nest! Their heart is hardly Dada’s, so let’s say it loud and clear against the fretting of the critics:- Bravissimo, Homer, for the lily-voiced cicadas!

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Ode on the Death of Tolstoy

Oda en la muerte de Tolstoi

Alfonso Reyes (1889-1959)

His father, a General and former Minister of the Interior, had 'got himself killed' (se hizo matar) in the Revolution, in the 10 days of 1911.
Oda en la muerte de Tolstoi
Alta encina y oráculo, milagro de la tierra, que hablaba estremecida del viento de la mar: hoy, en el corazón antiguo de la sierra, la mano se ha secado que la pudo plantar: la que estallaba en rojos rayos de profecías y echaba por las tribus bendiciones de pan; la que, en la sal del llanto que llora Jeremías, amasaba las ásperas harinas de su pan. (Porque, desde la noche primera de los días, los hijos de los hombres no se redimirán.) Inmensidad de cielo y mar, alta virtud de consolar, de alimentar, de perdonar – oh Satanás – y de matar. Alegría funesta, consuelos enemigos, piedad sañuda y flora turbia de bien y mal: limosna de la muerte, que alarga a los mendigos en ademán de dádiva la hoja del puñal. La cruz de aquel profeta, larga como un gemido, subía hasta las nubes en pos de tempestad: por ella descendía el dragón encendido a devorar el fruto de la posteridad. (Porque la humanidad es perenne gemido, y es mejor no nacer para la humanidad.) Desolación, desolación. Es nuevo Herodes la razón; sea, en el ara del perdón, la humana mies, degollación. Con la sabiduría clásica del Sileno, avanza por los campos de hielo el redentor; el carro de su voz rodaba como un trueno, su frente era promesa, sus ojos estupor. Venerable como un tronco vestido de heno, el redentor tenía la cara de Moisés. Bajo el cabello, lívido reverberar de plata, cogiosa barba llueve como una catarata. Lleva alas de relámpago prendidas a los pies. Cuando deja salir la voz a predicar, es como si gritara súbitamente el mar. Desolación, desolación. Maldita está la Creación, y es una larga convulsión el palpitar del corazón. Y el coro de los pueblos hierve como la espuma – oh asalto de las olas –, persigue al redentor; el vaho de los hombres forma en el éter bruma, y la tierra se moja de llanto y de sudor. (Flota en la estepa un vívido reverberar de plata que llueve de la tarde como una catarata.) y la terrible boca pronuncia la sentencia, y ardiente espada surge de la terrible boca; consúmese a lo lejos el Árbol de la Ciencia, y el Arca de Noé se parte en una roca: “Hermanos, replegaos al útero materno. Abrid tumbas, la vida es vergüenza y error. La carne de los hombres es pasto del Infierno. La Creación es mancha del manto del Señor.” Inmensidad de cielo y mar, alta virtud de consolar, de alimentar, de perdonar – oh Satanás – y de matar.
Ode on the Death of Tolstoy
Great oak and oracle, and earthly miracle, who spoke when shaken by wild winds of sea, to-day in highland’s primeval heartland the hand is parched that had planted thee. Red rays of warning in bursts were streaming! You blessed the tribes with the gift of bread; and in the salt tears that Jeremiah shed you heaped the coarse flour of your grain, for since the first night of the noon-days there’s no redeeming the sons of men. Immensity of sky and sea, grace of consoling lenity, to feed, to take our sins away – O Satan, Satan – and to slay. Joy like a corpse, comforter malignant, raging saint, grime-flower of good and ill: death’s coin of mercy that offers beggars the seeming gift of the blade of daggers! The prophet’s cross, longer than a groaning, ascended cloud-high to vex the storm, down which descending the fiery dragon devoured the fruit of the yet unborn. (For man is one everlasting groaning, the best for man, never to be born.) Desolation, desolation, Herod is reborn as Reason; at the altar-rail of pardon let man’s harvest be beheading. With classic wisdom of old Silenus, through icy plains the redeemer made his way. His voice’s ox-cart rolled on like thunder, his brow spoke promise, his eye a dreamer’s, the face of Moses was this redeemer’s, a stately tree-trunk all hung with hay. Below his hair, livid silver drum-beat, his beard like white-water-shock was raining, with wings of lightning his feet were shining, and when he turned loose his voice to preaching, it seemed a sudden shouting of the sea. Desolation, desolation, accursed is all creation, a drawn-out convulsion the heart’s palpitation. The troop of peoples like sea-froth seething – O surging waves – rounds on the redeemer; the human vapour befogs the ether, the earth is wet with its sweat and weeping. (Across the steppe, vivid silver drum-beat, white water foaming, rains down at evening.) The fearsome mouth speaks the judging word, the fearsome mouth wields the burning sword; the Tree of Knowledge far off is tinder, the rock has split Noah’s Ark asunder: “O brothers, brothers, unseal the tomb, fall back, return to our mother’s womb, for life is shame, life is false accord, men’s flesh is feed for the hosts of hell, and Creation a stain on the raiment of the Lord.” Immensity of sky and sea, grace of consoling lenity, to feed, to take our sins away – O Satan, Satan – and to slay.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Gold

Gold

Joachim Ringelnatz (1883-1934)

Gold
Gold macht nicht jeden reich, Gold ist geschmeidig und weich Wie ein Lurch. Schlängelt sich zwischen den Fingern durch. Gold entrollt, von Gott gewollt. Gold soll nicht frech sein. Gold darf nicht Blech sein, Nicht durchmessingt oder durchsilbert. Gold will redlich frei sein, Ohne aufgezwungnes Beisein, Hören Sie, Gilbert? Gold macht uns trunken. Gold Stinkt als Halunkensold. Gold macht nicht gut. Gold wittert Blut. Gold macht nicht froh. Wo ist Gold? Wo? In Europa ist kein Gold mehr da. Alles Gold ist in Amerika. Doch Sie haben recht, mein lieber Mister, Deutschland nährt ein bißchen viel Minister. In den Einzelstaats-Beamtenheeren Könnte man die Hälfte gut entbehren.
Gold
Gold has a glitch: Not everyone’s rich. Malleable, bland as Soft salamanders, Liquefied ingots Slip through your fingers. Gold accomplishes What God wishes, Won’t be ill-bred, Mayn’t be of lead, Brassed, or silvered. Listen up, Gilbert! Gold wants to be Honestly free, Not to be told Where it must be. Gold gets us heavily drinking. Gold pays for villainy, stinking. Gold can’t make good. Gold smells of blood. Gold’s not good cheer. Where is it? Here? Europe? No more, Now we are poor: Only beyond, Over the pond. Though, dear American Sir, You may affirm, any Time you prefer, We have in Germany At the trough, Too many Ministers, more than enough, Statelets with armies of employees. We could dispense with half of these.
from 'Ringelnatz the Rhymer' The High Window, 2024.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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Le Pont du Nord

Le Pont du Nord (as sung by Germaine Montéro)

Pierre Mac Orlan (1882-1970)

Le Pont du Nord (as sung by Germaine Montéro)
Je n’ai pas pu payer ma taule. Je dois deux semain’s et ma clé N’ouvrira plus la rue des Saules: Ainsi l’a voulu le taulier. La neige tomb’, c’est grand’ vacherie Dans l’ciel, sur la terre et sur moi. Le froid mord dans mes joues maigries Et me ronge le bout des doigts. Ma mèr’ m’a dit, il y a longtemps, — «C'est sur le Pont du Nord qu’Adèle Ta soeur aînée a foutu l'camp Pour danser la java rebelle Loin des conseils de ses parents. C’est là qu’ell’ perdit sa ceinture, La vie et l’air de la chanson. Les Rabouin’s, la Bonne Aventure, Tout ça c’est de l’accordéon.» Quand ma mère eut fermé la bouche, Mon premier soin, ru’ Durantin, Fut d’aborder une Manouche. On peut dir’ qu’elle tombait bien. Sa jupe à volants était mûre; Elle a regardé dans ma main Et m’a dit la Bonne Aventure Devant la port’ d’un marchand d’vin. —«Tu seras marié pour toujours Avant que la lune se couche Dans la lumièr’ du petit jour Tout d'suite après ta premièr’ touche: Car c’est ainsi que naît l’amour. Tu me paieras à la prochaine… Es-tu rassuré’ sur ton sort ? Il est au bout du Pont des Peines, Autrement dit le Pont du Nord. » — «Monsieur, demandai-je à tout l'monde, Où se trouve le Pont du Nord?» Les uns disaient: Au bout du monde Et d’autres: Au bout du corridor. Dans les neiges indifférentes J’ai aperçu le pont brumeux. Il n’avait pas de main-courante Et frôlait le fleuve et les cieux. Le vent, tel un homme en folie, Bouscula les points cardinaux; Et la neige fondit en pluie Pour mieux vous refroidir les os. Et la chair promise au tombeau La fille aperçut-elle un signe Qui lui fit entrevoir les corps Des mal marié's à la dérive ?… Ce n'est plus de notre ressort.
Le Pont du Nord
Can’t pay my rent. Two weeks behind. My key won’t open Rue des Saules: The landlord’s wish, he isn’t kind. It’s snowing, snowing wretchedly On earth, on heaven, and on me. On my thin cheeks the snowflakes fall: The cold bites into them, and nips And gnaws my frozen finger-tips. My mother told me long ago ‘Le Pont du Nord is where Adèle, Your elder sister, went awol And whooped it up, a ne’er-do-well, Far from her parents’ good advice. She lost her belt, she lost the tune, Her life and luck and good fortune: Drop-outs and chancers, no-one nice, Sad song, cheap music, rotten show.’ Soon as my mam had turned it up, My first requirement was to step To Gypsy Rose, rue Durantin, A palmist, doing rather well: The skirts she wore were flounced and full. She read my hand, my fate and all My future and my fortune in The doorway of a bottle-shop. 'Before the setting of the moon You shall be wed for ever more At the first light of early dawn, As soon as you’ve embarked on your… For that’s the way that love is born. Pay me next time. I reassure My clients: all you hear is gain. You’ll need to cross the Bridge of Pain That’s also called Le Pont du Nord.’ I asked if anyone could say Where I might find the Pont du Nord. Some said: it’s half the world away, Some said: it’s down the corridor. The snow just fell without a thought. I saw the bridge in misty guise: No handrail, no police report, It skimmed the river and the skies. The wind was like a man insane: The compass-points were all assailed. The snow was melting into rain, By which your bones are truly chilled. The flesh is promised to the tomb. Did the girl see by any chance A sign that let her glimpse the doom Of brides in sad mésalliance? That’s now beyond our competence.
Published in Journal of the London Institute of Pataphysics, 2020.

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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A Bird is Singing

Un oiseau chante

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918)

Un oiseau chante
Un oiseau chante ne sais où C’est je crois ton âme qui veille Parmi tous les soldats d’un sou Et l’oiseau charme mon oreille Écoute il chante tendrement Je ne sais pas sur quelle branche Et partout il va me charmant Nuit et jour semaine et Dimanche Mais que dire de cet oiseau Que dire des métamorphoses De l’âme en chant dans l’arbrisseau Du cœur en ciel du ciel en roses L’oiseau des soldats c’est l’amour Et mon amour c’est une fille La rose est moins parfaite et pour Moi seul l’oiseau bleu s’égosille Oiseau bleu comme le cœur bleu De mon amour au cœur céleste Ton chant si doux répète-le À la mitrailleuse funeste Qui claque à l’horizon et puis Sont-ce les astres que l’on sème Ainsi vont les jours et les nuits Amour bleu comme est le cœur même
A Bird is Singing
A bird is singing don’t know where must be your soul that’s watchful there among so many really mere soldiers, his song delights my ear Listen he sings so tenderly where on what branch I cannot say goes everywhere delighting me weekdays and Sundays night and day About this bird what can I say about these metamorphoses a soul on song in shrubby tree a heart in heaven a heaven in roses Love is the bird of soldiers. I’ve a darling girl who is my love more perfect than a rose of course blue bird sings just for me he’s hoarse Blue bird as blue as my love’s blue heart loving heart of heaven’s own your song is sweet recite it to the deadly automatic gun That clatters on the skyline do we see the stardust being sown the days and nights are going gone blue love blue as the heart is blue

Translation: Copyright © Timothy Adès

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