Since all is passing,
Let us make a passing melody.
The one that quenches our thirst
Will be right for us.
Let us sing what leaves us
With love and art;
Let us be quicker
Than the quick departure.
A swan moves over the water,
surrounded by itself,
like a gliding tableau.
Thus the beloved
is sometimes
a moving space.
He draws near, duplicated
like the swimming swan,
to our troubled soul ....
which adds
the trembling image
of joy and doubt.
Sleep at the end of the avenue,
Tender child, under the flagstone,
one will make a song of summer
around your interval.
If a white dove
passes in flight above,
I would offer upon your tomb
only his shadow that falls.
Better than a secular tower,
I warm myself to ripen my carillon.
May it be sweet, may it be good
for the Valais girls.
Every Sunday, tone by tone,
I throw them my manna;
may it be good, my carillon
for the Valais girls.
May it be sweet, may it be good;
Saturday night into their beers
my carillon falls drop by drop
to the Valais boys of the Valais girls.
My dear one, I must leave.
Do you want to see
the place on the map?
It is a black point.
In me, if the thing
succeeds, it will be
a red point
in a green land.