From: "Les Collines" by Apollinaire/Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War (c) U. of California Press Berkeley
*
Come let me kiss you on the brow
You who are nimble as a flame
Yours is all its pain
All its ardor and all the glitter
*
Helpful spirits wander
And mingle among men
In these times that overtake us
Here nothing ends nothing begins
Look at the ring on your finger
*
I was begging another time
But was given only a flame
That burnt me to the lips
No word of thanks could I say
Torch nothing can extinguish
*
Of suffering and kindness
Beauty will be composed
More perfect than the beauty
That arose from symmetry
It snows I burn and I tremble
*
. . . the maitre d'hotel
Pours them an unreal champagne
It foams up like a snail
Or like a poet's brain
And all the while a rose was singing
*
And the third number is the lady
Going up in the elevator
She keeps going going up
And the light keeps spreading out
And those clarities transform her
*
But these are petty secrets
There are other deeper ones
That soon will be unveiled
And divide you into a hundred pieces
Still having one common thought
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