To Daniel Halévy

If I had money from a boundless mint

and sinew enough in hands, lips, loins,

I’d shun the vanity of politics and print,

and leave—tomorrow? No, tonight!—for lawns

luminous with artificial green

(without the rustic flaws of frost and vermin),

where I’d forever be sleeping with one

warm child or other: François? Firmin? …

For what is manly mockery to me?

Let Sodom’s apples burn, acre by acre,

I’d savor still the sweat of those sweet limbs!

Beneath a solar gold, a lunar nacre,

I’d… languish (an ars moriendi of my own),

deaf to the knell of dreary Decency!