GUILLAUME APOLLINAIREHere you are in Amsterdam with a girl you find pretty and who is ugly
She is to marry a student from Leyden
There are rooms for rent in Latin Cubicula locanda
I remember I stayed three days there and as many at Gouda
You are in Paris at the juge d’instruction
Like a criminal you are placed under arrest
You have made sorrowful and happy trips
Before noticing that the world lies and grows old
You su√ered from love at twenty and thirty
I have lived like a fool and wasted my time
You no longer dare look at your hands and at every moment I want to burst out
sobbing
For you for her I love for everything that has frightened you
With tear-filled eyes you look at those poor emigrants
They believe in God they pray the women nurse their children
Their odor fills the waiting room of the gare Saint-Lazare
They have faith in their star like the Magi
They hope to make money in Argentina
And come back to their countries having made their fortunes
One family carries a red quilt as one carries one’s heart
That quilt and our dream are both unreal
Some of these emigrants stay here and find lodging
In hovels in the rue des Rosiers or the rue des Écou√es
I have often seen them in the evening they take a stroll in the street
And rarely travel far like men on a checker board
They are mostly Jews their wives wear wigs
They sit bloodlessly in the backs of little shops
You are standing at the counter of a dirty bar
You have a cheap co√ee with the rest of the ri√ra√
At night you are in a big restaurant
These women are not wicked still they have their worries
All of them even the ugliest has made her lover su√er
She is the daughter of a policeman on the Isle of Jersey
Her hands which I have not seen are hard and chapped
I have an immense pity for the scars on her belly
I humble my mouth by o√ering it to a poor slut with a horrible laugh