The world is for those born to conquer it
And not for those who dream they can conquer it, even though they may be right.
I have dreamt more than Napoleon accomplished;
I have clasped to my hypothetical breast more humanity than Christ;
I contrived philosophies in secret that no Kant ever wrote.
But I am, and maybe I shall always be, the one in the garret,
Even if I don’t live in one;
I shall always be the one who was not born for that;
I shall always be only the one who had (good) qualities;
I shall always be the one who waited for the door to be opened by a doorless wall,
And sang the song of the Infinite in a chicken-house,
And heard the voice of God inside a plugged well.
Believe in myself? No, not in anything.
May Nature pour over my ardent head
Its sun; its rain, the wind that finds my hair.
And the rest that may come if it comes, or if it has to come, or if it has not.
Cardiac slaves to the stars,
We conquer the world even before we rise from bed;
But we wake up and it is opaque,
We get up and it is alien,
We go out and it is the whole Earth,
Plus the Solar System and the Milky Way and the Indefinite.
(Eat chocolates, little girl;
Eat chocolates! Believe me, there is no metaphysics in the world other than chocolates;
Believe me, all the religions together do not teach more than the candy-shop.
Eat, dirty girl, eat!
I wish I could eat chocolates as earnestly as you!
But I think and, on peeling the silvery paper, which is made from tin foil,
I drop it all to the ground, as I have done with my life.)
But at least it remains from the sorrow of what I shall never be
The rapid calligraphy of these verses,
Collapsed portico to the Impossible.
But at least I confer upon myself a tearless contempt,
Noble at least in the grand gesture with which
I throw the dirty laundry that is me, in a washing-list, unto the course of things,
And stay home shirtless.
(You who comfort, who do not exist and therefore comfort,
Either Greek godess, conceived as a living statue,
Or else Roman patrician, impossibly noble and baneful,
Or princess sung by troubadours, most charming and colourful,
Or eighteenth century marquise, décolletée and distant,
Or celebrated courtesan from the time of our parents,
Or modern whatever- I don’t really know what-
All that, whatever you may be, inspire if you can!
My heart is a bucket that was emptied.
As those who invoke spirits, summon spirits I summon
Myself and find nothing.
I go to the window and see the street with absolute sharpness.
I see the shops, I see the street-walks, I see the passing cars,
I see the clothed living beings who cross each other,
I see the dogs which also exist,
And all this weighs on me as a sentence of exile,
And all this is foreign, as is everything.