The Drunken BoatAs I was going down impassive rivers,I no longer felt myself guided by haulers!Yelping redskins had taken them as targets,And had nailed them naked to colored stakes.I was indifferent to all crews,The bearer of Flemish wheat or English cottons,When with my haulers this uproar stopped,The Rivers let me go where I wanted.Into the furious lashing of the tides,More heedless than children's brains, the other winterI ran! And loosened peninsulasHave not undergone a more triumphant hubbub.The storm blessed my sea vigils.Lighter than a cork I danced on the wavesThat are called eternal rollers of victims,Ten nights, without missing the stupid eye of the lighthouses!Sweeter than the flesh of hard apples is to children,The green water penetrated my hull of firAnd washed me of spots of blue wineAnd vomit, scattering rudder and grappling-hook.And from then on I bathed in the PoemOf the Sea, infused with stars and lactescent,Devouring the green azure where, like a pale elatedPiece of flotsam, a pensive drowned figure sometimes sinks;Where, suddenly dyeing the blueness, deliriumAnd slow rhythms under the streaking of daylight,Stronger than alcohol, vaster than our lyres,The bitter redness of love ferments!I know the skies bursting with lighting, and the waterspoutsAnd the surf and the currents; I know the evening,And dawn as exhalted as a flock of doves,And at times I have seen what man thought he saw!I have seen the low sun spotted with mystic horrors,Lighting up, with long violet clots,Resembling actors of very ancient dramas,The waves rolling far off their quivering of shutters!I have dreamed of the green night with dazzled snows,A kiss slowly rising to the eyes of the sea,The circulation of unknown saps,And the yellow and blue awakening of singing phosphorous!I followed during pregnant months the swell,Like hysterical cows, in its assault on the reefs,Without dreaming that the luminous feet of the MarysCould restrain the snout of the wheezing Oceans!I struck against, you know, unbelievable FloridasMingling with flowers panthers' eyes and humanSkin! Rainbows stretched like bridal reinsUnder the horizon of the seas to greenish herds!I have seen enormous swamps ferment, fish-trapsWhere a whole Leviathan rots in the rushes!Avalanches of water in the midst of a calm,And the distances cataracting toward the abyss!Glaciers, suns of silver, nacreous waves, skies of embers!Hideous strands at the end of brown gulfsWhere giant serpents devoured by bedbugsFall down from gnarled tress with black scent!I should have liked to show children those sunfishOf the blue wave, the fish of gold, the singing fish.--Foam of flowers rocked my driftingAnd ineffable winds winged me at times.At times a martyr weary of poles and zones,The sea, whose sob created my gentle roll,Brought up to me her dark flowers with yellow suckersAnd I remained like a woman on her knees...Resembling an island tossing on my sides the quarrelsAnd droppings of noisy birds with yellow eyes.And I sailed on, when through my fragile ropesDrowned men sank backward to sleep!Now I, a boat lost in the foliage of caves,Thrown by the storm into the birdless air,I whose water-drunk carcass would not have been rescuedBy the Monitors and the Hanseatic sailboats;Free, smoking, topped with violet fog,I who pierced the reddening sky like a wallBearing--delicious jam for good poets--Lichens of sunlight and mucus of azure;Who ran, spotted with small electric moons,A wild plank, escorted by black seahorses,When Julys beat down with blows of cudgelsThe ultramarine skies with burning funnels;I, who trembled, hearing at fifty leagues offThe moaning of the Behemoths in heat and the thick Maelstroms,I, eternal spinner of the blue immobility,Miss Europe with its ancient parapets!I have seen sidereal archipelagos! and islandsWhose delirious skies are open to the sea-wanderer:--Is it in these bottomless nights that you sleep and exile yourself,Million golden birds, O future Vigor?But, in truth, I have wept too much! Dawns are heartbreaking.Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter.Acrid love has swollen me with intoxicating torpor.O let my keel burst! O let me go into the sea!If I want a water of Europe, it is the blackCold puddle where in the sweet-smelling twilightA squatting child full of sadness releasesA boat as fragile as a May butterfly.No longer can I, bathed in your languor, O waves,Follow in the wake of the cotton boats,Nor cross through the pride of flags and flames,Nor swim under the terrible eyes of prison ships.
Translation by Wallace Fowlie
Below is the book that includes a translation I like as well. The first translation I ever read, Louise Varese, but I can’t find it online. The book is worth having.
And here is a glimpse of the Delacroix:
I am quite tired so I will report again tomorrow. Have a good night. I have a few more photos and another translation for tomorrow…..
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