Translation | “The Small True Things” from Capital of the Pain by Paul Éluard (1926)

I

On the house of laugh
A bird laughs in its wings.
The world is such quiet
That it’s no longer in its place
And such pleasure
That he lacks nothing.

II

Why I am so beautiful?
Because my master washes me.

III

With your eyes I change like with the moons
And I’m in turn to turn and of plumb and of plume,
An mysterious and black water that encloses you
Or good in your hair in your light victory.

IV

A color lady, a color gent,
One to bosoms, one to hair,
A mouth of passions
And such you see red
The more beautiful is to your knees.

V

To make laugh the certain one,
Is she in stone?
She collapses.

VI

The monster of the leaked air as plumes
Of this bird scorched by fire of the gun.
Its complaint stirs all the long of a wall of tears
And the scissors of eyes cut the melody
Which shoot already in the heart of the chaser.

VII

Nature has become entangled in the strings of your life.
The tree, your shadow, shows naked flesh : the sky.
It has the voice of sand and the gestures of wind.
And all the things you say move behind you.

VIII

She refuses always to understand, to wait,
She laughs to hiding her dread of herself.
She walked always on the arcs of nights.
And everywhere the she passed
She left
The footprint of the broken things.

IX

On this dilapidated sky, on these windows of sweet water,
What face will come, resonant shell,
Calling that the night of the love touches the day.
Mouth opens links to the mouth closed.

X

Unknown, she was my favorite form,
The one who takes me away the worry of being a man,
And I see her and I lost her and I suffered
My pain, like a little of Sun in the cold water.

XI

The men that change and resemble
Are, the session of their days, always closes the eyes
For clear the haze of derision
And…

List of Poetry Translations
(Français, English, Español, Italiano, Deutsch, Nederlands, Svenska)
Anna de Noailles, Francis Jammes, W. B. Yeats, Rupert Brooke, etc.