For you. All of it, always for you, my love.

Le Cygne

La vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui
Va-t-il nous dechirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublie que hante sous le givre
La transparente glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui!
Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se delivre
Pour n'avoir pas chante la region ou vivre
Quand du sterile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.
Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l'espace infligee a l'oiseau qui nie,
Mais non l'horreur du sol ou le plumage est pris.
Fantome qu'a ce lieu son pur eclat assigne,
Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mepris
Que vet parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.

Stéphane Mallarmé, 1885, published in La Revue Independante



The Swan

Will the virginal, strong and handsome today
Tear for us with a drunken flap of his wing
This hard forgotten lake which the transparent glacier
Of flights unknown haunts under the frost!
A swan of former times remembers that it is he
Magnificent but who without hope gives himself up
For not having sung of the region where he should have been
When the boredom of sterile winter was resplendent.
All his neck will shake off this white death-agony
Inflicted by space on the bird which denies space
But not the horror of the earth where his wings are caught.
Phantom whom his pure brilliance assigns to this place,
He becomes immobile in the cold dream of scorn
Which the Swan puts on his useless exile.

translation by Wallace Fowlie, 1953