night in the lonesome October
In all that I endured there was no physical suffering but of moral distress an infinitude. My fancy grew charnel, I talked "of worms, of tombs, and epitaphs." I was lost in reveries of death, and the idea of premature burial held continual possession of my brain. The ghastly Danger to which I was subjected haunted me day and night. In the former, the torture of meditation was excessive - in the latter, supreme. When the grim Darkness overspread the Earth, then, with every horror of thought, I shook - shook as the quivering plumes upon the hearse. When Nature could endure wakefulness no longer, it was with a struggle that I consented to sleep - for I shuddered to reflect that, upon awaking, I might find myself the tenant of a grave. And when, finally, I sank into slumber, it was only to rush at once into a world of phantasms, above which, with vast, sable, overshadowing wing, hovered, predominant, the one sepulchral Idea.
Edgar Allan Poe, "The Premature Burial"
La Première Nuit
Voici venir le soir doux au vieillard lubrique.
Mon chat Mürr, accroupi comme un sphinx héraldique,
Contemple inquiet de sa prunelle fantastique
Monter à l'horizon la lune chlorotique.
C'est l'heure où l'enfant prie, où Paris-Lupanar
Jette sur le pavé de chaque boulevard
Les filles aux seins froids qui sous le gaz blafard
Vaguent flairant de l’œil un mâle de hasard.
Moi, près de mon chat Mürr, je rêve à ma fenêtre.
Je songe aux enfants qui partout viennent de naître,
Je songe à tous les morts enterrés d'aujourd'hui.
Et je me figure être au fond du cimetière
Et me mets à la place en entrant dans leur bière
De ceux qui vont passer là leur première nuit.
Jules Laforgue
The First Night
Here comes the evening, sweet to old letches.
My cat Mürr, crouched heraldic sphinx, watches
-- uneasy behind his fantastic pupil -- the moon
Gliding chlorotic across the horizon.
This is the hour when the child prays, when Paris-Lupanar
Ejects its cold-breasted girls onto the boulevards,
And they trawl the gaslit pavements, bold to try
Any random male with the wink of an eye.
But at the window, with Mürr, I lead my revery.
I think of all the babies drawing their first breath.
I think of the day’s new dead laid in the earth.
And I imagine myself in the depth of the cemetery
And put myself in their place, stretched on the bier--
Those who will be spending this first night there.
(my translation)
Happy Halloween!
