PAUL VALÉRYWhen, as now, light freezes above the gulf,
a gem revolving in its radiant gleam
such many-faceted and glittering foam
that a great peace seems to extend itself,
those clear-cut artefacts of the continuum,
time and knowledge, take the shape of a dream.
Wide-open vault and chaste shrine to Athene,
deep reservoir of calmly shining money,
like an eye the supercilious water-structure
lies somnolent beneath its burning veils;
and my soul-silence too is architecture,
a golden hoard roofed with a thousand tiles.
Temple of time I breathe when I breathe in,
to this high point I climb and feel at home
ordering all things with a seaward stare
of circumspection; and, as my supreme
o√ering to the gods, the serene glare
sows on the depths an imperious disdain.
But even as fruit consumes itself in taste,
even as it translates its own demise
deliciously in the mouth where its form dies,
I sni√ already my own future smoke
while light sings to the ashen soul the quick
change starting now on the murmuring coast.
Under this clear sky it is I who change—
after so much conceit, after such strange
lassitude, but bursting with new power,
I give myself up to these brilliant spaces;
on the mansions of the dead my shadow passes
reminding me of its own ephemeral hour.
A soul-exposure to the solar torches
I can endure, and the condign tortures
of the midsummer’s pitiless bronze light;
and though submission show a midnight face
invisible in daytime, to that bright
presence I concede the superior place.