When You’re Seventeen

YI
You’re not serious when you’re seventeen.
-One fine evening, tired of beers and lemonade,
The noisy cafes with their dazzling gleam!
-You walk below like-trees’ green on the Parade.

The limes smell so good on fine June evenings!
                       The air’s so sweet somtimes you close your eyes:
                    The wind, full of sounds -the town’s nearby-
                    Blows the smell of beer, and the scent of vines..

II
                    - Then you make out a little tiny tatter
                    Of sombre azure framed by a twig of night,
                    Pierced by a fatal star, it melts, after
                    Soft tremblings, tiny and perfectly white…

                    June night! And Seventeen! – You get tipsy.
                    The sap’s champagne and blurs every feature…
                    You wander: you feel a kiss on your lips
                    That quivers there, like a tiny creature…

 

III
Your mad heart goes Crusoeing the romances,
-Where in the pale lamp’s glare your eyes follow
A young girl going by with sweet little glances
Below the gloom of her father’s stiffened collar..

And because she finds you immensely naive
As by, in her little ankle boots, she trips
She turns away alertly with a quick shrug
- And a cavatina dies away on your lips..

You’re in love. Taken till the month of August.
You’re in love. – Your sonnets make her smile.
All your friends have gone: you’re in bad taste.
- Then the adored, one evening, deigns to write!

That evening.. you return to the cafes gleam,
You call out for beer or lemonade…
- You’re not serious when you’re seventeen
And the lime-trees are green on the Parade.

– Arthur Rimbaud

Advertisement