Marcel Proust: Schumann

Marcel Proust

(1871-1922)

Schumann

Your old garden receives your friendship well

Understands the boys whistling from their nests in the hedges

Your step-loves for so many wounds

Schumann, pensive soldier disappointed by war.

 

The happy pregnant breeze, or passage of doves,

The scent of jasmine submerged in big shadow,

The child reading the future in the hearth’s flames,

The clouds or the wind speak to your grave heart.

 

Formerly your tears ran with the cries of the carnival

Or mixed their softness with bitter victory

Whose insane outburst still shudders in your memory;

You can cry without end: It is to your rival.

 

Towards Cologne the Rhine rolls its sacred water.

Ah, you sing the feast days merrily on its edges!

– But broken sorrow, you are deadened…

Tears rain in enlightened dark.

 

You dream where dead see, where faith is thankless,

Your hope is in flowers and powder is their crime…

Then a heart-rending bolt of lightning reawakens,

When the new thunderbolt strikes you for the first time.

 

Flow, fill with fragrance, march to drums or be beautiful!

Schumann, confidant of love and flowers,

Between your joyous quays, holy rivers sorrow,

Pensive garden, warm, fresh and faithful,

Where moon lilies and swallows kiss,

Army marches, child dreams, woman weeps!

Marcel Proust poetry

fleursdumal.nl magazine

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