To Daniel Halévy
Sonnet
Pederasty
If I had a large bag of gold or copper coins
With a little nerve in loins, lips or hands
Abandoning my vanity - horse, senate or book,
I would flee far away, yesterday, this evening or tomorrow
To the raspberry strewn lawn - emerald or
carmine! -
Free from rustic irritations, wasps dew or frost
I want to sleep with, love or live for ever
With a warm boy, Jacques, Pierre or Firmin.
Be gone the timid scorn of Those who judge!1
Doves, send down your snow! Sing, young elms! Ripen, apples!
I want to breathe his scent until I die!
Beneath the gold of reddening suns, beneath the pearl
of moons
I want... to faint away and believe myself dead
Far from the mournful knell of importunate Virtues!
M.P.
Written November 1888.
1. Difficult to translate: "Arrière le mépris timide des Prud'hommes!" Prud'homme can mean a member of a tribunal, a skillful artist/tradesman but is presumably also a reference to the poet Sully Prudhomme.