G. Apollinaire: Zone

So now you're finished with this ancient world

Shepherdess O morning Eiffel tower your flock of bridges bleats today

You've had enough of living in antiquity the Greek and Roman way

Here even motor cars look ancient from the past
Religion is the only thing that's new religion lasts
Simple and sweet like hangars at the aerodrome

Alone in Europe you are not antiquity O Church of Christ
And the Euopean most ahead is you Pope Pius X
But you whose shame the windows saw 
                                           you draw away
And dare not enter church to confess your sins today 
You read the leaflets catalogues and posters all who sing full voice
This is the poetry of now and if it's prose you want there are the magazines
Slim volumes 25 cents a go chockfull of police adventure tales
Pics of powerful men and a million sundry topics to regale

Today I saw a pretty street whose name escapes me now
New and tidy in the sun a clarion call
Managers workmen lovely shorthand typist girls
From Monday morn till Saturday four times a day they pass
At morning time three times the siren moans
A mad clock brays at lunch
Inscriptions signs and posters on the walls
Warnings and advisories like parrots shrilly call
I love the elegance of this industrial street
Situated in Paris between the rue Aumont-Thieville and the avenue of Ternes
  
There's the new-born street and you are only just a child
Your mother hasn't dressed you yet in sailor blue and white
You are very pious and with your eldest friend Rene Dalize
You like nothing more than the pomps of the Eglise
It's nine pm the gas is down all dressed in blue you steal out from the dorm
You pray all night in the chapel of the school
So the eternal adorable deep amethist
Becomes forever the flamboyant joy of Christ
'Tis the lovely lilly we all cultivate
'Tis the torch hair streaming red the wind cannot abate
'Tis the pale green son of the mother's grief
'Tis the tree stuffed full with prayer-slips by the sheaf
'Tis the star that shines the sixfold rays
'Tis the God who dies on Friday and is back alive Sundays
'Tis the double potency of honour and eternity
'Tis the Christ who reaches heaven faster than the men who fly
He holds the world record for altitude

Christ O pupil of my eye
Twentieth pupil of the centuries he has the flair
And changes into a bird this century Jesus flies in air
Devils in the depths lift up their heads as he goes by
They say he's off like Simon Magus in Judai
They roar at him the fly boy look he knows just how to fly
The angels do the loop around the jolly looping boy
Icarius Enoch Elis Apollonius of Thayne
All giddy around the premier airoplane

And they sometimes make room to let pass by
The ones who transport up the holy eucharist
Priests forever raising up the host
The plane stops by for them at last with wings unclosed

The sky disgorges now swallows by the ton
Immediately crows and falcons owls join the fun
From Africa the Ibis bird the flamingoes of the marabout
The fabled Roc bird of whom story-tellers poets spout
Flies down low holding in his claws the primal Adam's snout
The eagle swoops from the horizon with a cry
And from America the little colibri
From China come the pihis long and supple
Who have but one wing each and have to be a couple
And then we have the dove who as the holy spirit flies
They all escort the lyre bird and the peacock with his eyes
The poenix that butcher who himself will slay
Flies up from the ashes where he burning lay
Sirens leave from where their perilous passes be 
And come by singing O so sweet all three 
And all of them the eagle phoenix and the pihis come from China
Come to fraternise with the flying machina

Now you walk though Paris alone among the crowd
Fleets of moaning autobusses rolling by your side
The pain of loving takes you by the throat
As if you never ever would again be loved
In ancient days you'd shave your head and take a vow
You feel ashamed when you surprise yourself in prayer
And mock and like the fires of hell your laughter tinkles
The sparkles of your laughter tinkle at the bottom of your life
An icon hanging in some dark art place
Sometimes you have to go and see it face to face

Today you walk through Paris the women stained with blood
It was and I do not want the memory it was the end of what was good

Engulfed in flames Our Lady looked at me in Chartres
The blood of your sacred heart flowed over me at Montmartres
It makes me sick to hear their words with such a cheerful ring
The love which makes me suffer is a shameful thing 
And the image in your heart will sustain you when you lie awake in pain

Always close to you that image passing by

Now you are on the Mediterraean shore
Under lemon trees which flower all the year
With your friends you take a trip by boat
One is Nicois one a Mentonite and two from la Turbie
We look aghast at coily creatures in the deep
And among the seaweed fish dart like images of Christ

You are in the garden of a town house near to Prague
You feel happy a rose lies on the table
And instead of writing out your tale in prose
You watch a beetle dozing in the centre of the rose

Chastened you see yourself in the mosaics of St Vite
You were sad enough to die that day as you and image meet
You are like Lazarus maddened by the light
The hands of the Jewish quarter clock go from left to right
And you remember too how slowly once upon a time
You crept up to the Hradachin one night and heard them sing
Those old Czech songs which made the taverns ring

Here you are in Marseilles by the melons piled up high

Here you are at Koblenz at the hotel du Géant

Here you are in Rome under a medlar from Japan

Here you are in Amsterdam wth a young lady who you think is lovely but is really plain then
She will have to marry with a student come from Leyden
You can hire rooms they say in Latin cubicula locanda
I remember I stayed there for three days and three nights more at Gouda

You're in Paris up before the investigating judge you wait
Like a criminal in your arrested state

You have done your journeying in sadness and in joy
Before you saw the lies and how growing old appears
You were hurt by love at twenty and again at thirty 
I've lived a foolish life and lost my years
You dare not look at your hands and every moment I would sob
For you the one I love and left you to your fears

You look and see eyes full of tears the emigrants among
They believe in God they pray and breast feed their young
Their smells fill the halls of the station St Lazare
They are magi of our time they have their star
They hope they'll make a fortune in the Argentine
And come back rich when they have made their pile
One family care for a red eiderdown like you care for your heart
That eiderdown and our dreams surreal too
Some of those emigrants will stop by and will lodge
In the dives of the rue des Rosiers or the rue des Écouffes which they can afford
And I have often seen them come up in the evenings take the air
They don't move much they are like pieces on a chequers board
And lots of Jews their wives wear wigs
Squatting pale and bloodless at the back of digs

You're standing by the zinc lined bar of a crappy place
Coffee for two soux among the unfortunates

That night you're in a swanky restaurant

These women are not really bad they have their problems all the same
Even so that ugly one has given her lover pain

She is the daughter of a sergent come from Jersey town
Her hands which I have not seen are cracked and brown
I have great pity for her stomach scars
Now I've done down this poor girl with her horrid laugh my mouth

You are alone the morning sure to greet
When milkmen clang their containers in the street 

The night will pass and so will each lovely girl, each pro
Ferdine the false or Lea on the go

And you drink this drink which burns you like your life
The life you drink like it were the eau of life

You're walking to Auteuil you want to get home on foot
And sleep among your fetish masks from Oceania and from Guinea
They are the Christs of other subtances and tropes
They are inferior Christs of other unknown hopes

Adieu adieu

Sunlight gizzard gutted

Guillaume Apollinaire, Alcools, 1913

Translation © 2026 Jurek Kirakowski