Etats (baryton & piano)

A new poetry from the same Laforgue

I can post the poem here, which is a beautiful black diamond (an automatic translation but quite close to the meaning)

As always at Laforgue, irony, tenderness, idleness of an impossible platonic love

We know that he loved a young Englishwoman with no return, and I think it was she who inspired him his most beautiful pages, here in the evening of his short life.

Thank you for your reviews and comments!

Ah! tonight, my heart feels sick, my heart is with the Moon!

O veils of silence, spread out your still lagoons;

O rooftops, terraces, basins, loosened necklaces

Of pearls, tombs, lilies, grieving cats — give praise

To the Moon, our Mistress to all, in her glory:

She is the Host! and silence is her ciborium!

Ah! how good it feels, oh! so good and sweet, in the halo

Of mourning around this finest diamond’s glow!

O Moon, you may find me a bit romantic,

But tell me — now and then, wouldn’t it be frantic

To think — just between us, and only if you please —

That I could be your Columbus, on my knees?

Well, let’s not speak of that; let’s chant the midnight rite,

Preserved in alcohol, steeped in your delights.

Slowing down towards us, O weary City,

Fibrous cell with broken organs, withered pity!

Remember the centaurs, the cities now erased,

Palmyra, and the snub-nosed sphinxes of Thebes the chaste;

And what Gomorrah, beneath your Lethe lake,

Hides catacombs in honor of barren Astarte’s sake!

And how mankind, with his “I love you” clichés,

Is much too anthropomorphic in his ways,

And knows only how to muddle through his days

With hellos and goodbyes while twisting love his way.

— Ah! As I was saying, and more than once or twice,

That my heart is sick — my heart is with the Moon, precise.