01 October 2011

buttoned up and blue

It's 4 in the morning
I get up fully dressed
In my hand a little bar of soap
Someone I love sent me

I go to wash up
I emerge from the hole we sleep in
I feel terrific
And happy to be able to wash up for the first time in three days
Then all clean I go get a shave
After that I blend in sky-blue with my blue uniform until night falls and it's a very sweet pleasure
To say no more about anything I do it's an invisible being doing it
All buttoned up and all blue now blended into the sky I disappear

By Guillaume Apollinaire, translated by Ron Pagett
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5 comments:

  1. microOctober 2, 2011 at 2:22 a.m.

    Is this about work?

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  2. anitaOctober 2, 2011 at 1:55 p.m.

    I think Appolinaire was a soldier in the first world war, hence the blue uniform.

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  3. lrOctober 4, 2011 at 9:23 a.m.

    ...although we didn't know this at first, and figured out the weird soldier-ness of it only after talking about it for a while, and then google-ing apollinaire.

    at first anita just liked it for the language of it, which is quite engaging.

    we're trying to find this in french right now, without luck.

    word verif: neterrie-- b/c in the morning, with his bar of soap, il a fait son neterrie.

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  4. lrOctober 4, 2011 at 12:37 p.m.

    frick this is an awesome poem/translation.

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  5. anitaOctober 5, 2011 at 7:50 p.m.

    i read it in adbusters. i read that sometimes for fun.

    ReplyDelete