Adapted from Les Collines by Guillaume Apollinaire
[St. Breeze]
One day in the sky over Paris two great airplanes made war
One was red and the other was black and still higher as the zenith flamed
Eternitys sunshine one was my entire youth
Other was the future made war furiously
Same as the radiant archangel struggled with Lucifer
So calculus hates the problem so night hates day
So my love batters my love so hurricane
Uproots the screaming tree but look at the sweetness
Paris like a girl awakens languidly shaking her long long hair
She begins to sing my youth was shot out of the sky
Now see how the future burns
Hear me announcing to the whole world the birth of prophecy
Man flies higher than eagles man pleasures the oceans
Man dispels shadows and spleen
His dream is real now is the time of the magic see they return
Billions of prodigies fathers to no fables and unimaginable
We shall require from man more than ever was required
We shall test his will and the power of it
Naked and unaided naked and unaided
I am the self-dismembered man denatured detached
Capable of d**h incapable of sin
What no one has ever touched i have touched intimately
Tasted what no one could possibly imagine
I measured numberless unthinkable lives i can die smiling