I. Old Overture of Herodiade

The Nurse (Incantation):

Abolished, and its ugly wing in the tears
Of the pond, abolished, which mirrors the alarms
The bare golds cudgeling the carmine space
An aurora has chosen, heraldic plumage,
Our funerary and sacrificial tower:
A heavy tomb which fled, a beautiful bird, a solitary
Whim of dawn in the empty black plumage
Ah! The manor of the deprived and sad country
No splashes! The sad water resigns itself
To being visited no longer by the feather or the swan
Unforgettable: water reflects the abandonment
Of the autumn extinguishing its firebrand in it
Of the swan when amid the pale mausoleums
Or the feather plunging its head, desolate
By the pure diamond of some star but
Earlier, which never sparkled
Crime! Pyre! Ancient dawn! Torment!
A purple sky! Lake of the implicated purple!
And on the rosiness, wide open, this window

The singular room in a frame, things
Of the warring century, gilding worn away
Finds them snow-covered, once colored as of old
And its tapestry, the pearly luster, folds
Uselessly with buried eyes
Of sibyls offering their old fingernails to the Magi
One of them, with a past of songs
On my whitened dress in the ivory, shut
In the sky of birds amid the scattered black money
Seeming like flights departing costumed and phantom
An aroma that carries, o roses! An aroma
Far from the empty bed that a blown-out candle hides
An aroma of cold golds lurking on the packet
A tuft of flowers perjures the moon
(In the melted wax again the one loses its petals)
Of whom the long regret and the stalks of which
Soak in a single vase in the brightness made languid
An Aurora dragged its wings in tears!

Magical shadow with symbolic charms!
A voice, long evocation of the past:
Is it mine, is it ready, the incantation?
Still in the yellow folds of thought
Dragging, antique, like one praised star
On a vague heap of cooled monstrances
By the old hills and by the stiffened folds
Pierced by the rhythm and pure lace
Of the shroud allowing its beautiful netting
Desperate to mount the old veiled brightness
To rise (o how far in these calls it hides)
The old veiled brightness of the unusual vermeil
Of the languid voice, void, with no assistance
It will scatter its gold by final glories
It, too, the refrain of verses in response
At the time of agony and of dismal fights
And, strength of the silence and of black darknesses,
Everything also returns in the past of the past
Fateful, defeated, monotonous, tired
Like the water of the ancient ponds accepts

She sings, sometimes incoherently,
Pitiful sign!
                  The bed on the vellum pages
So, useless and so monastic, is not the linen!
Who of dreams by folds no more has the dear book of spells
Nor the sepulchral canopy to the desert iridescence
The scent of hair asleep. Did she have it?
Cold child, to keep her subtle pleasure
In the morning shivering with flowers, its promenades
And when the nasty evening has cut the pomegranates!
The crescent, yes, the only one is in the iron dial
Of the clock, for weights suspending Lucifer
Always hurt, always striking anew hourly
By the water clock to the hidden wept drop
Who, neglected, she wanders, and not on her shadow
An angel accompanying her unspeakable step
He did not know this, the king who paid
For a long time the ancient breast was dried up
Her father does not know this, nor the glacier
Fiercely reflecting its arms of steel
When on a recumbent heap of corpses without coffins
Fragrant of resin, enigmatic, he offers
His trumpets of dark silver to the old fir trees
He will come back one day from the cisalpine countries
Early enough? Because everything is predicted and a bad dream!
To the fingernail which rises among the glassware
According to the memories of trumpets, the old
Sky burns, and changes a finger in an envious candle
And before long its redness of sad twilight
Penetrated the body of receding wax!
Of twilight, no, but of red rising,
Rising in the last day that comes to finish everything
So sadly it struggles, we do not know any more the hour
The rosiness of this prophetic time which weeps
For the child, exiled in her precious heart
Like a swan hiding its eyes in its feathers
As they were put by the old swan in his feathers, bereft
Of his hopes, to see the diamonds chosen
By a dying star, which does not shine any more

II. Scene

The Nurse – Herodiade

Nurse:
You live! or do I see here the shadow of a princess?
My lips to your fingers and their rings and ceases
To walk in an age ignored ...

Herodiade:
                                              Stand back.
The blond torrent of my spotless hair
When he bathes my lonely body, the ice
Of horror, and my hair which the light intertwines,
Are immortal. O woman, a kiss would kill me
If beauty were not death ...
                                            By what charm
Led and by what morning forgotten by the prophets
Spilled, on the distant dying, their sad feasts
Do I know it? You saw me, o nurse of winter
Under the heavy prison of stones and of iron
From which my old lions drag their tawny centuries
To enter, and I walk, mortal, the safe hands
In the desert perfume of his ancient kings
But still, have you seen what my terrors were?
I stop dreaming about the exiles and I lose my leaves
As, near a pond whose fountain welcomes me
The pale lilies that are in me, while to fall for,
To follow the languid debris with a glance
Falling, across my reverie, in silence
The lions, of my dress, push aside the indolence
And watch my feet which would calm the sea
Calm down, you, the shivers of your aged flesh
Come, and my hair imitates the too fierce
Ways which cause your fear of manes
Help me, because you do not desire to see me anymore
Has combed it casually in a mirror

Nurse:
Nor else the happy myrrh in its closed bottles
Of the essence stolen from the maturity of roses
Do you want to try the dismal virtue,
My child?

Herodiade:
Leave these perfumes here, you do not know
That I hate them, nurse, and do you want me to feel
Their drunkenness flooding my listless head?
I would like my hair, which is not flowers
To spread the forgetfulness of human pain
But of gold, forever, virgin of seasoning
In their cruel flashes of lightning and in the dull pallor
Observing the sterile coolness of the metal
Having reflected, jewels of the native wall
Weapons, vases from my lonely childhood

Nurse:
Forgive me! The age erased, queen, your defense
Of my spirit dimming like an old book or black. . .

Herodiade:
Enough! Hold this mirror before me.
O mirror!
Cold water frozen in your frame by boredom
How many times and during the hours, saddened
By the dreams and searching my memories which are
Like the leaves under your ice in a deep hole
I appeared in you like a distant shadow
But, horror! In the evenings, in your severe fountain
I have know my dream, scattered, well known, nakedness

Nurse, am I beautiful?

Nurse:
A star, in truth
But these tresses fall—

Herodiade:
Stop, in your crime
That freezes my blood in its veins and punishes
This gesture, famous impiety. Ah! Tell me
What certain demon throws you into the grim emotion,
This kiss, these fragrances offered, and, shall I say it?
O my heart, this hand, still sacrilegious
Because you wanted, I think, to touch me. This is a day
Which will not end without misfortune on the tower
O day which Herodiade looks on with horror!

Nurse:
Strange time, indeed, in which the sky guards you
You wander, only a shadow and new fury
And seeing in you, premature with terror
But still adorable, as much as an immortal
O my child, and awfully nice, and such
That. . .

Herodiade:
            But were you not going to touch me?

Nurse:

                                                                       I would like to be
The one to whom Fate reserves your secrets

Herodiade:
O! Keep silent!

Nurse:
                       Will it sometimes come?

Herodiade:
                                                              Pure stars,
Do not listen!

Nurse:
                      How, otherwise among dark
Terrors, to dream more merciless still
And like the god who pleads that the treasure
Of your grace should wait! And for whom, devoured
By anguish, do you keep the unknown magnificence
And the vain mystery of your being?

Herodiade:
                                                            For me.

Nurse:
Sad flower that only grows and has no other emotion
Than its shadow in the water seen with languor

Herodiade:
Go, keep your pity as your irony

Nurse:
However, explain: o! no, naïve child
Will decrease, some day, this triumphant disdain. . .

Herodiade:
But who would touch me, respected by lions?
Besides, I want nothing human, and sculpted
If you see me eyes lost in paradise
That is when I remember I once drank your milk.

Nurse:
Dismal victim of the fate it was given!

Herodiade:
Yes, it is for me, for me, that I flowered, deserted!
You know it, gardens of amethyst, buried
Without end in your learned, dazzled abysses
Unknown golds, keeping your ancient light
Under the dark shadow of a first earth
You, stones where my eyes like pure jewels
Borrow their melodious brightness, and you
Metals that give to my young hair
A fatal splendor and its massive look!
As for you, woman born in malignant centuries,
For the wickedness of sibylline caverns
Who speak about a mortal! According to whom, of calyxes
Of my robes, aroma in the wild delights
Beyond the thrill of my white nakedness
Prophesies that if the warm azure of summer
To him, as if native, the woman unveils herself
I saw in my shivering modesty of star
I die!

        I like the horror of being a virgin and I want to
Live amid the terror in which I do my hair
For the evening, withdrawn in my bed
Inviolate reptile smell in the useless flesh
The cold flicker of your pale clarity
You die for you, you who burn with chastity
White nights of ice and of cruel snow!
And your solitary sister, o my eternal sister
My dream will rise towards you, this already,
Rare transparency of a heart which it dreamed
I only believe in my monotonous homeland
And everything, around me, lives in idolatry
Of a mirror which is reflected in its quiet frame
Herodiade in the clear view of diamond…
O last charm, yes! I feel it, I am alone.

Nurse:
Madam, do you thus go to die?

Herodiade:
No, poor grandmother,
Be quiet and moving away, forgive this hard heart
But before, if you want, close the shutters, the Seraphic
Azure smiles in the deep windows
And I hate, yes I do, the beautiful azure!

Waves delude
And, over there, you know no country
Where the sinister sky has the hated glances
Of Venus which, in the evening, burns in the foliage
I would leave there

Lighter yet, childishness
You say, these torches where the wax on fire lights,
Cries among the empty gold some foreign tear
And. . .

Nurse:
            Now?

Herodiade:
                     Goodbye.
                                    You lie, o bare flower
Of my lips
                 I expect something unknown
Or perhaps, ignoring the mystery and your cries
Throw away your supreme and bruised tears
Of a childhood feeling among the reveries
Parting finally its cold gems

III. The Canticle of St. John

The sun which glorifies

Its supernatural stopping place

Immediately comes down again

Incandescent

I feel like the vertebrae

Spreading darkness

All in a thrill

In unison

And my head suddenly appeared

Solitary lookout

In the triumphant swashes

Of this scythe

As a frank break

Rather forces back or slices off

The old disagreement

With the body

Fasting, drunk, that she

If obstinate to follow

In some wild leap

Its pure glance

Up here, where the high cold

Eternal does not endure

Whether you surpass it

All, o glaciers

But according to a baptism

Visionary in the same

Principle which chose me

Tilts a salute

04/02/2008 - 11/28/2008