Autumn (Automne)

Guillaume Apollinaire

Autumn Crocuses (Les colchiques)

The meadow is venomous but lovely in autumn

The cows graze there

And are slowly poisoned

The colchicum colour of shadow and lilac

Flowers there your eyes resemble that flower

Violet shades like their shadow that autumn

And slowly your eyes empoison my life

The children arrive from school, what a fracas,

Dressed in smocks and playing harmonicas

They gather the crocuses that are like mothers

Daughters of their daughters your eyelids’ colour

That beat as the flowers beat in the wild breeze

The herdsman sings and sings quite softly

While slowly, mooing, the cows abandon

Forever this wide field flowered by autumn.

Autumn (Automne)
 

Through the mist a shambling farm-hand goes,

Slowly, with his ox, through the mists of autumn

Which hide the villages, their poverties and woes

And as he goes along the farm-hand sings a tune

A song of love, a song of infidelity

About a ring about a heart breaking yet

Oh! Autumn, autumn, summer’s fatality

Through the mists go two grey silhouettes.