Le Modѐle des dormeurs / The Model Sleeper, by Jean Cocteau

Sleep is a petrifying

Cataract. The sleeper,

Atop his distant hand,

Is stone tucked under colour.

Sleepers are playing-Jacks,

Sleepers have not high nor low.

They pass away from us,

Their force of arms at rest.

Dreams are the droppings

Of sleep, and those creating dreams

Disturb the petrifying river,

And see in them the bed.

(The petrifying river elucidates

This aura poorly copied

From the antique before me

Of a nude model sleeping.)


                    **

Le sommeil est une fontaine
Pétrifiante. Le dormeur
Couché sur sa main lointaine
Est une pierre en couleurs.

Dormeurs sont valets de cartes,
Dormeurs n'ont ni haut ni bas,
De nous un dormeur s'écarte,
Immobile à tour de bras.

Les rêves sont la fiente
Du sommeil. Ceux qui les font
Troublent l'eau pétrifiante
Et les prennent pour le fond.

(L'eau pétrifiante explique
Cet air maladroitement
Copié d'après l'antique
D'un modèle nu dormant.)

There are so many flaws in this translation I won't be able to list them, but I thought I'd try something a bit more literal -- at least more literal, and structurally consistent with the original -- than Jeremy Reed's translations of Cocteau's poems, which are, as far as I know, the only English translations of Cocteau's poems in print. Maybe his are better after all.

From Cocteau's collection Opéra, containing poems written 1925-1927, printed in Jean Cocteau: romans, poésies, oeuvres diverses, by Le Livre de Poche, 1995