Dead Dreams

See! All day the calm sea, something like a shield,

has worried all day at the flank of the promontories,

leaped up their steaming stair,

poured out onto the rocks that scream without bending

the foamy shiver of its long black swells.

Today a cold breeze flutters over the waters.

The sun's beauty rises and illuminates them.

Toward the pure horizon where the ships

swim from the blue coast, a whirlwind of birds

escape into the divine immensity.

Among the seaweed, at the points of the islets,

those broken by the untrammeled assault of the torment,

livid and bloody under the weight of the waves,

their sobbing mouth still open,

dart their haggard eyes through the sleeping water.

Friend, your deepest heart is like this sea,

which makes filigrees on the fine sand.

It wept, raged against the bitter deep,

burst against these iron rocks a hundred times,

a whole long day of drunkenness and horrifying struggles!

Now it retreats, calms down, snuffs itself out.

Without fear, without desire that the hurricane should be reborn

under the immortal sun it barely fights.

But genius, hope, love, strength and youth are there,

dead in the foam and blood of combat.