LOUIS-RENÉ DES FORÊTSNo, she is there, really there,
What matter if sleep beguiles us,
We must burn out our eyes,
Endure the sweet su√ering,
Shake, lose, even, our reason,
Destroy anything that would come to destroy
The wonderful vision
Welcomed as one trembles
At the sight of a face seized by death
In the final splendour of its flowering.
She is there to keep watch over us,
Who only sleep to catch sight of her,
When through shame, through fear of our tears,
We flee outdoors at daytime,
Though there too we wait for her return,
And seek illicit refuge
In the bright sun’s stultifying blaze.
What the heart recognizes, reason denies.
A dream, but is anything more real than a dream?
Must we learn to live without dreaming
That the child, drawn toward the places she knew,
Comes into the rose garden, and nightly
Fills our bedroom with her pure flame
Which she brings toward us like an o√ering and a prayer?
These visions were only the delusions of forgetfulness,
Their charm, brutally broken, teaches us
That what we long for we do not have.
Finished, then, finished the illusion we maintained
She is not where we thought we saw her
Nor where we also will never be.
Silent in the depths of the ground
Who, except through willing deception,
Will ever hear us then
As in the time of our happy loves
When we were living people
Attentive to the slightest avowal on our lips
But free to speak or be still?