Larkspur in June

Flower Picking

The garden proffered bloom for us to pick.
My beauty, do you know how many flowers,
Tea roses pale from love around your head,
Wither and die each year?

Their stems will bend before the rising wind.
Rose petals are strewn before us on the path.
Gather them, lovely, for our own dreams’ flowers
Will fade tomorrow too!

Put them in a cup and close the doors.
Languid and cruel, thinking of days gone by,
We shall watch the roses’ agony of love
A death-rattle amid perfume.

The garden blooms no more, my egotist.
Day’s butterflies have fled to other flowers,
And now the only visitors will be
The butterflies of night.

The flowers will die profane to be indoors.
Our roses one by one shed all their grief.
O beauty, shed a tear...Each flower that fades
It is a love that dies!

(Guillaume Apollinaire, translated from the French)