Saint-John Perse

                                



                                                Nocturne






Now!  they are ripe, these fruits of a jealous fate.
From our dream grown,  on our blood fed,
         and haunting the purple of our nights,
     they are the fruits of long concern,  they are the fruits of long desire,
    they were our most secret accomplices and, often verging upon avowal,
   drew us to their ends out of the abyss of our nights....
Praise to the first dawn,  now they are ripe and beneath the purple,
      these fruits of an imperious fate. ─We do not find our liking here.

Sun of being, betrayal!  Where was the fraud, where was the offense?
 Where was the fault and where the flaw, and the error, which is the error?
 Shall we trace the theme back to its birth?
 Shall we relive the fever and the torment? ...
Majesty of the rose, we are not among your adepts:
    our blood goes to what is bitterer, our care to what is more severe,
   our roads are uncertain,  and deep is the night out of which our gods are torn.
Dog roses and black briars populate for us the shore of shipwreck.

Now they are ripening, these fruits of another shore:
"Sun of being, shield me!" ─ turncoat's words.
And those who have seen him pass will say: who was that man, and which his home?
Did he go alone at dawn to show the purple of this night? ...
Sun of Being,  Prince and Master?  our works are scattered,
       our tasks without honor and our grain without harvest:
             the binder of sheaves awaits, at the evening's ebb.
 
─Behold, they are dyed with our blood,  these fruits of a stormy fate.

At the gait of a binder of sheaves life goes, without hatred or ransom.

                                                              

                                                  Alexis Saint- Leger Leger






─Translated from the French by Richard Howard









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