Il glisse sur le bassin,
comme un traîneau blanc, de nuage en nuage.
Car il n’a faim que des nuages floconneux
qu’il voit naître, bouger,
et se perdre dans l’eau.
C’est l’un d’eux qu’il désire.
Il le vise du bec,
et il plonge tout à coup son col vêtu de neige.
Puis, tel un bras de femme sort d’une manche,
il le retire.
Il n’a rien.
Il regarde: les nuages effarouchés ont disparu.
Il ne reste qu’un instant désabusé,
car les nuages tardent peu à revenir, et, là-bas,
où meurent les ondulations de l’eau,
en voici un qui se reforme.
Doucement, sur son léger coussin de plumes,
le cygne rame et s’approche . . .
Il s’épuise à pêcher de vains reflets,
et peut-être qu’il mourra victime de cette illusion,
avant d’attraper un seul morceau de nuage.
Mais qu’est-ce que je dis?
Chaque fois qu’il plonge,
il fouille du bec la vase nourrissante
et ramène un ver.
Il engraisse comme une oie.

He glides on the pond,
like a white sleigh, from cloud to cloud.
For his hunger is only for the fleecy clouds
that he sees forming, moving
and being lost in the water.
It is one of them that he desires.
He aims at it with his beak,
and suddenly immerses his snow-clad neck.
Then, just as a woman’s arm emerges from a sleeve,
he pulls it back.
He has caught nothing.
He looks: The startled clouds have disappeared.
He remains disillusioned for only a moment,
for the clouds return before very long, and, over there,
where the ripples on the water are dying away,
one cloud is already forming.
Softly, on his light feather cushion,
the swan paddles and approaches . . .
He exhausts himself fishing for empty reflections,
and perhaps he will die, a victim to that illusion,
before catching a single piece of cloud.
But what am I talking about?
Every time he dives,
he burrows in the nourishing mud with his beak
and comes back with worm.
He’s fattening up like a goose.

Translated by Arbie Orenstein