Genius Translations
Juliette - Le Sort de Circé (The Spell of Circe)
From the time that I was beautiful and a little purile
I transformed men into animals
How many mariners
How many imbeciles
I changed to swine
I was being mischievous
Casting my malefices
On the companions of Ulysses
My name you still speak of from ancient legends
They call me Circe and I am Sorceress
Mutatis mutandis
Here I want a snout
A ham for the thigh
And that pushes up into the loins
A curious appendix
Mutatis mutandis
Now I impose on you
The colour of a rose
From the head to the coccyx
Mutatis mutandis
Is it true that everything in the pig
Can be compared as good in the man, no!
I only gave the proper form
To these pretty forms
Prisoners of my pens
From my eye that gauges them
From my hand that fills the trough
Pataugeant dans la boue* (Miring in the mud), poor little humans
Would you be more serene as healthy spirits or porcine?
Mutatis mutandis
Here I want a snout
A ham for the thigh
And that pushes up into the loins
A curious appendix
Mutatis mutandis
Now I impose on you
The colour of a rose
From the head to the coccyx
Mutatis mutandis
But the time has passed on and I have thrown away my dopes
My powders, my potions, my sorceries
Ulysses has long since rejoined Penelope
Between other sacrileges ...
I go from port to port (I go from pork to pork)
Seeing if I still find
A man in each pork (a man in each port)
Noting that nobody, in this world in a rush
Puts no more magic in the bottom of his syringe
When it is but piglets
That I transformed them
Here they are now
Endrunkened by mammon, by power, by chicanery
Changed into scavengers, into vultures, into vermin
Mutatis mutandis
Here, I want some teeth
That make your hair bristle
Let it flow in your blood
Fury and vice
Mutatis mutandis
That burn in your heart
Hate and greed
That takes the predator
The sinister furred hide!
Be blind and be deaf
And lead to sacrifice
To pity and love