Steel fireworks
How charming these illuminations
     Artificer’s artifice
Lends a little style to courage

Two air-burst shells
Pink explosion
Like two breasts set loose
Their nipples insolently pointing
WHAT A LOVER
                  What an epitaph

A poet in the forest
       His revolver half-cocked
Observes with indifference
Roses dying of hope

He thinks of Saadi’s roses
And suddenly his head slumps
When a rose reminds him
Of the soft curve of her hip

The air stinks with a terrible alcohol
Filtered by half-closed stars
The shells caress the soft
Night perfume where you rest
     Mortification of the roses

Guillaume Apollinaire
(translation by John Lyons)

Note: A later version of this poem appeared in the previous post