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The Carnival
Théophile Gautier (1811-1872)
IN THE STREET
It is an old popular
tune By all the raked violins,
By the barking dogs angry
By all the nasty organs.
The music
snuffboxes have it on their repertoire;
for the canaries it is classical,
and my grandmother, as a child, learned it.
To this tune, pistons, clarinets,
In the balls with powdery cradles,
Jump committed and gray,
And from their nests flee the birds.
The guinguette, under its arbour of
hops and honeysuckle,
Celebrates, shouting the ritornello,
the gay Sunday and the argenteuil.
The blind man with a bassoon who whines
and whines, fucks him with the wrong fingers;
the sebaceous one with his teeth, his poodle
Near him grunts him in the middle voice.
And the little guitarists,
Thin under their thin tartans,
Yelp with their sad
voices at the tables of the singing cafés.
Paganini, the fantastic,
One evening, as if with a hook,
Collected the ancient
theme From the end of his divine bow,
And, embroidering the faded
gauze That the pipework still blushes,
Made on the scorned phrase
Run his golden arabesques.
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