Crépescule: Sunset

I love sunsets.  I love that fleeting moment before the day goes to sleep when everything is color and has that slightly pink haze.  So many sunsets in Paris are marred by clouds and smog, but recently, spring breezes and clear days have given two especially breathtaking ones. Their are two French words for sunset, one is le coucher du soleil, literally, the sun going to sleep, and the other is le crépescule, twilight.   I found this poem by Guillame Apollinaire entitled Crépescule. I am trying to read more French poetry, inspired by the fact that French school children memorize the great poems of the French authors beginning at about the age where I was mastering tying my shoes.  Here it is, in translation (not my own, and for the record, poetry and songs really just always lose something in translation. To truly understand this, take any boy band song from the nineties, and imagine how stupid it would sound if you had to explain the translation a phrase like “I want it that way”):

Crépescule

Brushed by shadows of the dead

On the grass where day expires

Columbine strips bare admires

her body in the pond instead

A charlatan of twilight formed

Boasts of the tricks to be performed

The sky without a stain unmarred

Is studded with the milk-white stars

From the boards pale Harlequin

First salutes the spectators

Sorcerers from Bohemia

Fairies sundry enchanters

Having unhooked a star

He proffers it with outstretched hand

While with his feet a hanging man

Sounds the cymbals bar by bar

The blind man rocks a pretty child

The doe with all her fauns slips by

The dwarf observes with saddened pose

How Harlequin magically grows

*See another really amazing sunset picture by going here: http://www.alumbraphotoblog.com/2010/03/22/that-sweet-salty-air/

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