The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

PAUL VALÉRY

Never, charm of daylight, has your grace
So su√ered from self-defense,
Yet, since the suns drew me from childhood,
I’ll return to the source where names cease to be.

The pure endless arms of the goddess
Vainly oppose me, harassing my strength.
But a thousand icy bonds gradually give way
And the silver shards of her naked majesty.

This secret sound of water, this river strangely
Places my sunlit days beneath a band of silk;
Nothing more blindly wears down the age-old joy
Than a sound of smooth and monotone flight.

The deep current carries me under bridges,
Arches full of wind, of murmuring dark,
They rush over me, their tedium crushing
My proud skull stronger than their doors.

Their night passes slowly. Under such weight,
My very soul almost yields up its light
Until in a gesture that clothes me in stone,
I sweep onward to the scorn of such idle sky.
—mary ann caws and patricia terry

The Seaside Cemetery

My soul, do not seek immortal life,

but exhaust the realm

of the possible.

Pindar, Pythian Odes

A tranquil surface where a spinnaker moves
flickers among the pines, among the graves;
objective noon films with its fiery glaze
a shifting sea, drifters like pecking doves,
and my reward for thought is a long gaze
down the blue silence of celestial groves.