Albert Marquet, "View of Paris with Notre-Dame and the Vert-Galant", 1909
Men of the future remember me
I lived at the time when kings ended
One by one they died silent and sad
And three times courageous became trismegists
How beautiful Paris was at the end of September
Every night became a vineyard where the vines
Spread their light over the city and above
Ripe stars pecked by drunken birds
Of my glory awaited the harvest of dawn
An evening passing along the deserted and dark quays
On returning to Auteuil I heard a voice
Who sang seriously, sometimes remaining silent
So that he also reached the banks of the Seine
The complaint of other limpid and distant voices
And I listened for a long time to all these songs and these cries
What the song of Paris awakened in the night
I thirst for cities of France and Europe and the world
Come all flow down my deep throat
I live while already drunk in the Paris vineyard
Harvested the sweetest grapes on earth
These miraculous grains which sang on the vines
And Rennes responded with Quimper and Vannes
Here we are, O Paris, our houses, our inhabitants
These clusters of our senses that the sun gave birth to
Sacrifice themselves to quench your thirst, too greedy, marvel
We bring you all the brains, the cemeteries, the walls
These cradles full of cries that you will not hear
And from upstream to downstream our thoughts, oh rivers
The ears of the schools and our hands close together
With outstretched fingers our hands the bell towers
And we also bring you this flexible reason
May the mystery close the house like a door
This courtly mystery of gallantry
This fatal fatal mystery of another life
Double reason which is beyond beauty
And that Greece did not know nor the Orient
Double reason of Brittany where blade to blade
The ocean is gradually castrating the ancient continent
And the northern cities responded cheerfully
O Paris here we are living drinks
The virile cities where they dress up and sing
The holy metals of our holy factories
Our open-air chimneys engulf the clouds
As the mechanical Ixion once did
And our countless hands
Hand-made manufacturing factories
Where the naked workers like our fingers
Making reality so much per hour
We all give you this
And Lyon responded while the angels of Fourvières
Weaved a new sky with the silk of prayers
Quench your thirst Paris with the divine words
Let my lips whisper the Rhône and the Saône
Still the same cult of his reborn death
Divide the saints here and rain blood
Happy rain oh warm drops oh pain
A child watches the windows open
And clusters of heads to drunken birds offer themselves
The towns of the South then responded
Noble Paris, the only reason that still lives
Who fixes our mood according to your destiny
And you who retire to the Mediterranean
Do you divide our bodies as we break wafers?
These very high loves and their orphan dance
Will become, oh Paris, the pure wine that you love
And an infinite rattle that came from Sicily
These words meant in the beating of wings
The grapes from our vines were harvested
And these clusters of dead people whose elongated grains
Have the flavor of the blood of the earth and of salt
Here they are for your thirst, O Paris under the sky
Obscured by starving clouds
That Ixion caresses the oblique creator
And where all the crows of Africa are born on the sea
O grapes And these dull and family eyes
The future and life in these vines are boring
But where is the luminous gaze of the sirens
He deceived the sailors whom these birds loved
He will no longer turn on the reef of Scylla
Where the three sweet and serene voices sang
The strait suddenly changed its face
Faces of the flesh of the wave of everything
What we can imagine
You are just masks on masked faces
He smiled young swimmer between the banks
And the drowned floating on its new wave
Following him, the plaintive singers fled
They said goodbye to the abyss and the pitfall
To their pale spouses lying on the terraces
Then having taken their flight towards the burning sun
Followed them in the wave where the stars sink
When the night returned covered with open eyes
Wander to the site where the hydra hissed this winter
And suddenly I heard your imperious voice
O Rome
Suddenly curse my old thoughts
And the sky where love guides destinies
The strips pushed back on the tree of the cross
And even the fleur-de-lis that dies in the Vatican
Macerate in the wine that I offer you and which has
The taste of the pure blood of one who knows
Another plant freedom of which you
Don't know that she is the supreme virtue
A triregnum crown fell on the flagstones
The hierarchs trample it under their sandals
O democratic splendor that fades
Come the royal night where the beasts will be killed
The she-wolf with the lamb, the eagle with the dove
A crowd of enemy and cruel kings
Thirsting like you in the eternal vine
Will come out of the earth and into the air
To drink my wine for two millennia
The Moselle and the Rhine join in silence
It is Europe that prays night and day in Koblenz
And I was lingering on the quay at Auteuil
When the hours sometimes fell like leaves
From the vine when it is time I heard the prayer
Who joined the limpidity of these rivers
O Paris, the wine of your country is better than that
Which grows on our banks but in the vines of the north
All the grains have ripened for this terrible thirst
My clusters of strong men bleed into the wine press
You will drink in long drafts all the blood of Europe
Because you are beautiful and only you are noble
Because it is in you that God can become
And all my winegrowers in these beautiful houses
Who reflect their fires in the evening in our two waters
In these beautiful, distinctly white and black houses
Without knowing that you are reality, they sing your glory
But we liquid hands joined in prayer
We lead the adventurous waters to the salt
And the city between us like between scissors
Reflects no fire in its two waters while sleeping
From which some distant whistle sometimes rushes
Disturbing the girls of Koblenz in their sleep
Cities were now responding by the hundreds
I could no longer distinguish their distant words
And Trier the ancient city
Their voice mixed with his own
The entire universe concentrated in this wine
Who satisfied the seas the animals the plants
The cities, the destinies and the stars that sing
Men kneeling on the shore of heaven
And the docile iron our good companion
The fire that you must love as you love yourself
All the proud departed who are one under my forehead
The lightning that shines like a nascent thought
All names six by six numbers one by one
Kilos of paper twisted like flames
And those who will know how to whiten our bones
The good immortal worms who are patiently bored
Armies arrayed in battle
Forests of crucifixes and my lake dwellings
At the edge of the eyes of the one I love so much
The flowers that cry out of mouths
And everything I can't say
Everything I'll never know
All this all changed into this pure wine
Which Paris thirsted for
I was then introduced to
Actions beautiful days terrible sleeps
Vegetation Couplings eternal music
Movements Adorations divine pain
Worlds that resemble you and that resemble us
I drank you and was not quenched
But I knew from then on what flavor the universe has
I'm drunk from drinking the whole universe
On the quay from where I saw the waves flow and the belandreas sleep
Listen to me, I am the throat of Paris
And I will please drink the universe again
Listen to my songs of universal drunkenness
And the September night slowly ended
The red lights of the bridges went out in the Seine
The stars were dying, the day was barely born
Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcohols, 1913
