John Sprague

John Sprague Poems

The Best Poem Of John Sprague

The Hills

High above Paris one day
Two great airplanes were battling
One was red the other black
While at the zenith flamed
The eternal solar plane

One of them was all my youth
The other was the future
They fought together raging
As Lucifer fought against
The Archangel radiant-winged

Like calculation to a problem
Like night ends the day
Thus all that I love attacks
My love – thus the hurricane
Strips the wailing trees

Yet see what softness everywhere
Paris like a young girl
Awakens languishingly
Shakes her long tresses
And sings her lovely song

Where then has my youth fallen
You see the future blazing
Know that I speak today
To announce to the world entire
The art of prophecy is born at last

Certain men are hills
Who rise up from among men
And see the whole far future
Better than if it were now
More clearly than if it were past

Ornaments of time and route
Pass and continue without pause
We let the snakes hiss
In vain against the southern wind
The charmers and the wave have died

2.
In the future order when machines
Begin at last to think
On beaches of shining gems
Golden waves will break
Froth will be mother sea again

Eagles go less high than us
It is he the joy of seas
Dissipating into the winds
The shadow and the dizzy rush
Through which the soul rejoins the dream

Behold you can expect
A new era of magic
Billions of miracles
Which are as yet unfabled
Not even imagined

Depths of consciousness
We will explore you then
And who knows what living beings
Will be drawn from those gulfs
Along with whole universes

See the prophets ascending here
Like distant hills of blue
They will know precisely things
Which scholars think they know
And will transport us everywhere

The great force is desire
Come that I may kiss your brow
O lightly like a flame
From which you have all the suffering
The fervour and the brilliance

The time is coming to study
All that it means to suffer
This will not be done from courage
Nor even self-denial
Nor anything we now can do

We will search into man himself
Much deeper than we have ever searched
We will investigate his will
And what force will there be born
Without machine or instrument

3.
Compassionate spirits roam
Diffusing themselves amongst us
From the time we were rejoined
Nothing ends there nothing begins
See the ring upon your finger

Times of deserts times of crossroads
Times of towns and hills
I come to make my journey here
In which a talisman plays its role
Deathlike and more subtle than life

I am at last detached
From all things natural
I can die but cannot sin
And that which no one has touched
I have touched it I have felt it

I have explored all that no one
Can even imagine
I have weighed many times
Imponderable life itself
I can die with a smile

Often I have soared so high
So high farewell to all such things
The strangeness and the phantoms
And I want no longer to admire
This boy who feeds on fright

Youth farewell jasmine of time
I have breathed your fresh perfume
In Rome on the flowered chariots
Laden with cloaks of garlands
And tiny carnival bells

Farewell youth white Christmas
When life was no more than a star
Whose reflection I pondered
In the Mediterranean sea
More pearly than meteors

Downy as a nest of Archangels
Or the garland of clouds
And shining more than halos
Emanations and splendors
Unique calmness harmony

4.
I stop in wonderment to see
Upon the incandescent lawn
Myself a serpent gliding there
Who is the flute on which I play
And the whip to flog all others

There comes a time for suffering
There comes a time for goodness
Youth farewell behold the time
When the future can be known
Without dying from that knowledge

This is the time of ardent grace
The will alone shall act
Seven years incredible trials
And man will exalt himself divine
More pure more alive more learned.

He will discover other worlds
The intellect wilts like flowers
From which are born savory fruit
Which we shall watch ripen
On the sunny hillside

I tell what is true of life
I alone thus can sing
My songs falling like seeds
Shhh quiet you others singing
Do not mix chaff with wheat

A vessel came into port
A great ship all decked out
But we found no one there
But a woman rosy and beautiful
She lay there murdered

At another time I begged
And was given just a flame
Which burned me to my lips
And I could not offer thanks
Torch which nothing can put out

Where are you o my friend
Who returned so well inside yourself
That only an abyss was left
Into which I threw myself
Down to the colorless depths

5.
And I hear my footsteps return
Down the length of paths no one
Has walked I hear my steps
At all hours passing there
Slowly or hurried they go or come

You Winter lathered for a shave
It snows and I’m unhappy
I have traversed the splendid sky
Where existence is music
The earth is too white for my eyes

Accustom yourself as I have
To the wonders I announce
Of the goodness which will rule
Of the suffering I endure
And you will know the future


It is from suffering and goodness
That beauty will be formed
More perfect than any found
In symmetry of proportion
It snows and I burn and I tremble

I am now at my desk
I describe what I have felt
And that which I have sung on high
A slender tree swaying to and fro
Its hair streaming in the wind

A tall top hat is lying on
A table laden with fruit
The gloves have died beside an apple
A lady wrings her own neck beside
A gentleman who swallows himself

The dance whirls round in the depths of time
I killed the band’s conductor
And for my friends I peel
The orange whose flavor is
A marvelous firework display

Everyone is dead, the maitre d’
Pours them unreal champagne
Which sparkles like a snail’s froth
Or like the inspiration of a poet
While all the time a rose is singing

6.
The slave holds up a naked sword
Like a spring the source of rivers
And each time she brings it down
A universe is gutted
From which new worlds emerge again

The driver grips the steering wheel
And every time along the road
He honks going round a curve
At the far horizon there appears
A universe as yet unknown

The third symbol is the lady
She rises in the elevator
Ascending higher higher always
And the light unfolds itself
The splendor transfigures her

But these are only small secrets
There are others more profound
Which soon will be revealed
Breaking you into a hundred pieces
Of the constant singular mind

But mourn mourn and mourn again
Whether the moon is full
Or whether she is just a crescent
Ah! mourn mourn and mourn again
We have laughed enough in the sun

Golden arms support our life
Penetrate the golden secret
That all is but a rapid flame
Flowered with the adorable rose
From which rises exquisite perfume.

translated from the French by John Sprague

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