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Charles Cros

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madrigal

translated from a fan owned by lady hamilton

    Time, implacable alchemist, will consume the warm perfume
of the sandalwood. 

    Yet these words inscribed on your fan will remain, and here
you'll still find the insubstantial scents of memory.

    Then the picture of your glittering youth will take shape in
your recollection. You'll be dazzled and delighted by it, as we are
dazzled and delighted when your coppery hair tumbles down upon
your shoulders.

    Time, tamed for a moment, will afterwards resume his ravening
task, and your flesh, palpable dawn, will be swept away suddenly by the wrath of fate or of man, or else wither slowly with the wind of
age to dissolve at last into the brown earth.

    This fan also, sold, bought, re-sold, soiled in drawers, broken by
children, discarded knack-knack amid bric-a-brac, may end in a bright bonfire or, sewer flotsam, float downstream to crumble, rotten, into the immense sea.

    Meanwhile stay proud in your dawn-tinted flesh, let your hair
insolently flare, toy with the perverse omnipotence of your
transparent eyes.

    For you are the current link in beauty's perpetual chain; since
what has shone once, shines for ever in the absolute; since in your
life's symphony there must be a stern and grand closing chord.

    Besides, these words about you, passed on from memory to
memory, shall incessantly bring back to life the sovereign hand that
held this fan and the flesh that with its perfumed flutterings it
caressed.

note: the secondary meaning of "madrigal" is
         "gallant speech", "compliment"

from le coffret de santal (1873)

Translated by Alexis Lykiard

Page(s) 53-54

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