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It WASN'T a Starry night,
although the moon was full when
three days before, I went
out to the fallow field,
put the revolver to my chest
and shot it once into my breast.
I missed my heart (how apt!);
I was never good with fine strokes.
Yes, a bullet sent right into my heart
would have worked, but I missed.
I sent you my self, so you would listen;
the part of me which heard your voice.
That didn't work as I had hoped it would.
I should have sent poetry, I knew I should.
And now I've failed as my own executioner
just as I failed as artist, and as lover.
I even failed with YOU, Mlle. Putain,
you who love for lucre, not Mon sucre.
Oh, yes, your rejection of me, Mon Putain:
that rejection was like bullets, over and over,
of me as your friend, as an artist, as your lover,
just as I felt impaled on the critics' barbs.
And so, now, I lie here, again impaled.
But now on this short, cold, leaden bullet.
It has drilled deep into my breast,
like just one more hateful comment.
But I MISSED my heart! My OWN heart!
Just as I missed YOUR heart, sweet-heart.
My chosen-to-be-beloved, Mon Coeur Doux!
( My "Flowers", how do they seem to you now?
My "Clouds", do you see them? And my "Dream"?
"Les etoilles", "les reves", "les nuages",
do you share them now? Oh!, I longed to know!!)
This hole near my heart is unrepairable,
and this final depression is unbearable,
but Oh!, this final mania is SO high!!
It is not a starry night, and it is not cold.
Few of our nights were warm or starry, I recall.
I am warm, and I have taken three days to die,
yet you have not come by, which makes me feel old.
I will go, and my heart will stay here, lay here.
I wish this were a starry night: I love those.
Bonsoir
