Francis Poulenc ~ Sanglots sung by Madelyn Renée Monti
Human love is ruled by the calm stars.
We know that within us many people breathe
who came from afar and are united behind our brows.
This is the song of that dreamer
who had torn out his heart
and was carrying it in his right hand...
Remember, oh dear pride, all those memories:
the sailors who sang like conquerors,
the chasms of Thule, the tender skies of Ophir,
the accursed sick, the ones who flee their own shadows,
and the joyful return of the happy emigrants.
Blood was flowing from that heart;
and the dreamer went on thinking
of his wound which was delicate ...
You will not break the chain of those causes...
... and painful; and he kept saying to us:
... which are the effects of other causes.
"My poor heart, my heart which is broken
like the hearts of all men...
Look, here are our hands which life enslaved.
"... has died of love or so it seems,
has died of love and here it is.
That is the way of all things.
"So tear your hearts out too!"
And nothing will be free until the end of time.
Let us leave everything to the dead,
and let us hide our sobbing.Translation from French (Français) to English copyright ©2001 by Peter Low.
Based on a text in French by Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary Kostrowicki (1880 – 1918), as Guillaume Apollinaire, “Sanglots”, appears in Il y a, no. 5.
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