Je Contemple Souvent Le Ciel de ma Mémoire
by marcel proust
translated by シビルチャン

Time erases everything like the waves erase
The works of children flattened on the sand
We will forget these words so precise and so vague
Behind each of which we sense the infinite.

Time wipes away everything it does not extinguish the eyes
Be they opal or star or clear water
As beautiful in the sky or a gemcutters table
They burn for us like a fire doleful or joyous.

The joyous ones flew alive from their jewelry box
To plunge in my heart their radiant stone
As on the day they were set, sealed in eyelids
They shine with a radiance precious and deceptive.

Some other sweet fires Prometheus still ravished
Spark of love which shined in their eyes
For our dear torment we have taken it
Brilliance too pure or jewelry too precious.

Stud forever the sky of my memory
Inextinguishable eyes of those that I loved
Dream like the dead, shine like the day
My heart will be shining like a night of May.

Forgetting erases faces like mist
Adoring gestures to the once divine
For whom we went mad, for whom we went wise
Charmed wandering and symbols of faith.

Time erases everything the intimacy of evenings
My two hands on her neck virgin as the snow
Her eyes caress my nerves as an arpeggio
Spring swinging its censers around us.

Some others, the eyes of a yet joyous woman,
In this way corroborate some grief vast and black
Horrified by nights and mysterious evenings
Between her lovely lashes held all her soul

And her heart was shallow as her joyful glance.
Others like the sea so fickle and so sweet
Misled us toward the soul buried in their eyes
Like those maritime evenings where the unknown steers us.

Ocean eyes on your bright waters we navigated
Desire inflated our sails so patchy
We departed forgetful of tempests past
Hopeful by gazes to discover souls.

So many different gazes, the souls all the same
Old prisoners of eyes, we are so disillusioned
We should have remained resting, sleeping under the arbor
But if you knew everything you would have left all the same

For to have in the heart their eyes full of promises
Like an evening sea dreaming of the sun
You have accomplished many pointless things
For reaching to the country of dreams in which, silver-gilt,

Lamented of ecstasy beyond the true water
Under the holy ark of a cloud believed prophetic
But it is sweet to have as a dream these wounds
And your memory burning like a festival.