Another take on the same old thing

Renewal

Lucid winter, season of art serene,
Is sadly driven out by sickly spring,
And where dull blood presides within my being
Impotence stretches itself in a drawn-out yawn.

White twilights glow lukewarm beneath my skull
Squeezed by an iron band like an ancient tomb,
As, following a vague, sweet dream, I sadly roam
Through fields whose sap is flaunted to the full

- then fall, enfeebled by the trees' perfume,
And hallowing with my face a grave for my own dream,
Biting warm earth in which the lilacs push,

I wait, engulfed in rising ennui...
- Meanwhile the Azure laughs on every bush
And wakened birds bloom twittering in the sun.

Stephane Mallarme (tr. Henry Weinfield)