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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
VENDEMIAIRE, by GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE Poet's Biography First Line: Remember me you men in years to come Last Line: With the fading stars dawn was about to break Alternate Author Name(s): Kostrowitzky, Wilhelm Apollina Subject(s): Drinks & Drinking; Paris, France; Wine | |||
Remember me you men in years to come My lifetime saw the passing away of kings Silent and glum they perished one by one Who were thrice brave reduced to conjuring In Paris how charmingly September closed Each night grew like a vine whose branches spread Light upon that city while overhead Ripe stars pecked at by my glory's tipsy birds Hung waiting to be gathered in the dawn Passing the shadowy empty quays one night As I came back to Auteuil I heard a voice Singing a grave song phrased with silences Through which there rose from all along the Seine Farther voices in distant pure lament Long I stood listening to these cries and songs Stirred by the voice of Paris in the night Cities of France of Europe of all the world I am thirsty drain into my deep throat Then I saw that Paris already drunk in the vine Was gathering the sweetest grape that the world knows The marvelous fruit singing from the trellises And Rennes answered for Quimper and for Vannes We are here O Paris Our houses our citizens These grapes of our senses engendered by the sun Perish to quench your thirst too urgent a prodigy To all of you we bring minds graveyards and walls And cradles filled with cries that you will not hear Upstream or down O rivers our thoughts are yours The ears of the schools and our joined hands Fingers pricked up like parish steeples We bring you the lithe power of reason too Mystery that shuts as a door shuts the house The gallant mystery of ancient courtesy Mystery fatal fatal in another life Double reason existing beyond beauty Unknown to Greece unknown to the Orient The double reason of Brittany where wave by wave The ocean slowly gelds the continent Gaily the cities of the North replied O Paris we are yours your lively drinks The virile cities where metallic saints Talk and sing in our consecrated mills Sky-open our chimneys fill the clouds As once Ixion good mechanic did And our numberless hands Shops mills factories hands Where workers naked as our fingers fashion Reality for whatever wage an hour All that we give you And Lyon answered as the angels of Fourvieres Wove a new heaven with the silk of prayer Refresh your thirst Paris with the divine words Murmured by my two lips the Rhone and the Saone The same cult rising always from its death Puts saints asunder here and rains down blood Fortunate rain O tepid drops O pain A child watches windows opening wide And grapes yielding themselves to drunken birds And then the cities of the South replied Great Paris last refuge of living reason Ordering our moods as your destiny compels And you O Mediterranean drawing back Divide our bodies as it were the broken Host These lofty loves and this orphan dance of theirs Shall be the pure wine O Paris that you love An endless death-rattle rose from Sicily Composing words in a long whir of wings All the grapes have been gathered from our vines And this fruit of the dead whose flattened seeds Taste of the blood of earth and of its salt All is yours for your thirst Paris beneath A sky curtained by hungry clouds Petted by Ixion that indirect creator And all the crows of Africa hatch in this sea O grapes And these leaden and domestic eyes Future and life mope in the trellises But where are the sirens with gleaming stare That trapped the mariners whom these birds loved There is no gleam now from the Skyllan rock Where once serene and soft three voices sang Suddenly the aspect of the strait had changed Faces of wave-flesh or of Whatever else the mind can summon up You are only masks imposed upon faces masked He smiled that young swimmer in midstream Among the drowned floating on that new flood And the plaintive singers fled in pursuit of him They said farewell to whirlpool and to rock To their pale husbands stretched on the terraces Then set their flight toward the burning sun Along the wave where the great stars plunge down When night returned covered with open eyes To wander where the hydra hissed this winter And suddenly I heard your imperious voice O Rome Damn with one breath all my accustomed thoughts And the sky where love shepherds our destinies The sprung iron bands on the tree of the Cross And even the fleur-de-lis dying in the Vatican Compounded in this wine I offer you having A taste of the pure blood of one familiar With a vegetal liberty you do not know For the essential power that it is The triple crown is fallen on the flagstones And hierarchs kick it with their sandaled feet O democratic splendor fading now Let the royal night descend and the beasts be killed Wolf-bitch and lamb eagle and mild dove A crowd of kings hostile and merciless Thirsting like you in the eternal vine Shall spring from the ground and come down from the air For a drink of my twice millenary wine In silence now the Moselle meets the Rhine At Coblenz it is Europe praying night and day And I who lingered on the Auteuil quay As the spaced hours drifted down like leaves I heard the timely prayer of the vine stock Joining the liquid purity of the rivers O Paris your own wine is better than this Grown on our banks but on branches from the north All the grapes are ripe for this terrible thirst My masculine strong grapes bleeding in the press You will drink down in long draughts all of Europe's blood Because you are beautiful because only you are noble And because it is in you that God becomes And these vintners of mine in their elegant houses That flash fire each evening across our waters In these fine houses stark white and black Not knowing the real you they chant your glory But we join our liquid hands in prayer Leading the restless floods down to the brine And the city lying between our two blades Sheds no light on its two waters as it sleeps While from time to time a far-off whistle Troubles the sleeping daughters of Coblenz And now the cities were answering by the hundreds I could no longer distinguish their distant speech And Trier that venerable city Joined its voice with theirs All the universe centered in this wine Containing seas animals plants Cities and their fate and the singing stars Men kneeling on Heaven's bank And docile iron our good companion And fire lovable as one's own self All the haughty dead united behind my brow The lightning flash quick as a newborn thought All names six by six all numbers one by one Tons of paper twisting like flame And those coming someday to whiten our bones The good immortal worms so demurely bored Armies ranged as for battle Crucifix forests and the lacustrine dwellings Along the shores of her eyes whom I love so And flowers crying out of mouths And everything that I can not say Everything that I shall never know All of it all of its changed into this pure wine For which Paris thirsted Then was revealed to me Accomplishments pleasant days horror nights Vegetation Couplings eternal music Motions Adorations divine regret Worlds self-mirroring mirroring us I have drunk you without being slaked But I have known since how the universe tastes I am drunk from drinking the whole universe On the dock by the river flood and the sleeping barges Oh hear me I am the gullet of Paris If I like I will drink the universe again Listen to my song of cosmic drunkenness The September night was ending slowly The red bridge-fires were dying in the Seine With the fading stars Dawn was about to break | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A CUP OF TREMBLINGS by JOHN HOLLANDER VINTAGE ABSENCE by JOHN HOLLANDER SENT WITH A BOTTLE OF BURGUNDY FOR A BIRTHDAY by JOHN HOLLANDER TO A CIVIL SERVANT by EDMUND JOHN ARMSTRONG WINE by FRIEDRICH MARTIN VON BODENSTEDT THE GOOD FELLOW by ALEXANDER BROME WHEN A WOMAN LOVES A MAN by DAVID LEHMAN AUTUMN by GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE |
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