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My room looks like a cage
The sun sticks its arm through the window
But I who want to smoke and make mirages
I light my cigarette with daylight
I don’t want to work I want to smoke
From Zone: Selected Poems of Guillaume Apollinaire. Published by New York Review Books. Translation Copyright © 2015 by Ron Padgett.
I’ve just written six
or seven short poems
in about half an hour,
in a cabin
on a pond
with raindrops.
Maybe I should
just sit here
for a while, let
some time pass
so my wife will think
I’ve been working hard.
See that?
Some time just went past
but so quietly
you might have missed it.
Then it morphed
into the sky.
Look, another one!
It came out
of my wristwatch
and slipped away.
The concierge’s mother and the concierge will let anything go by
If you’re a man you’ll go with me tonight
All we’d need is one guy to hold the main door
While the other one goes up
Three lit gas jets
The boss has TB
When you’re finished we’ll play a game of backgammon
An orchestra conductor with a sore throat
When you come to Tunis I’ll get you some dope to smoke
That rings a bell
Piles of saucers some flowers a calendar
Bim bam bim
Hell I owe 300 francs to my landlady
I’d rather cut off my dong than pay her
I finally have the right to greet these beings I do not know
They pass by in front of me and gather far away
While everything about them is strange to me
And their hope is just as strong as mine is now
I do not sing this world and the other stars
I sing all the possibilities of myself beyond this world and the stars
I sing the joy of wandering and the pleasure of dying of it