Après le Déluge

After the Flood

  As soon as the idea of the Flood has calmed down,
  A hare stopped among the sainfoins and the swinging bellflowers, and prayed to the rainbow through the spider's web.
  Oh the precious stones were hiding, —the flowers were already watching.
  In th dirty big street, the stalls lined up, and the people towed their boats toward the sea terraced up to the heaven like that of prints.
  The blood flowed, at Blue-beared's house, —in the abattoirs, —in the circuses, where the God's seal paled the windows. The blood and the milk flowed.
  The beavers built. The "mazagrans" smoked in the cafe-bars.
  In the glass-fitted big house still rain streaming, the children in black watched the marvelous pictures.
  A door banged, in the village square, the child swung his arms in the showers to the weather vanes and the cocks of bell towers everywhere.
  Madame X set up a piano in the Alps. The masse and the first communions were celebrated on the hundred thousand altars in the cathedral.
  The caravans departed. And the Splendid Hotel was built in the chaos of ice and night in the polar region.
  After that, the Moon heard the jackals howling from the deserts of thyme, —and the folk songs with wooden shoes grumbling in the orchard. Then, in the budding violet forest, Eucharis told me that spring had come.
  Pond, spring out, —froth, roll over the bridge and jump over the wood; —black cloth and organs, —lightnings and thunders, —rise up and roll; —Water and sadness, rise up and rise the Floods again.
  Since they have died down, —oh the precious stones vanished and the flowers opened! —it's boring! and the Queen, the Witch who makes her hot coal in the clay pot, will never want to tell us what she knows, and what we don't know.

French Text
There is no "après" on the first line (as the second word) in his handwritten manuscript.

Translated by Kunio Monji
Arranged by ichico
August 5th, 2001

index  next coming soon >>