New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1920-05-02
row that serious attempts are
being made in some quarters
to stir up enmity between

France and the United
States, it is important to find the real
attitude of the French people toward
us; the following poem confirms their
friendship in the face Of reams of
propaganda. 1t was written year
after the close Of the war by Luc Dur
tain, one Of the best known of their
younger poets, and was published in
the "Nouvelle Revue Francaise." The
poem is interesting in another way as
French salute to the American dead.
M. Curtain owes not only the subject
but the form Of his verse to America;
he is a thorough student of Whitman.
To the American Soldiers.
BY LUG CURTAIN
Translation by Malcolm Cowley)
Friends. companions, brothers
CAS- II 1 could seize you
with these words as with my outstretched
hands,,
You took your course from yonder, your
faces like the furrowed earth,
With the wind of the prairies in your breast
with your four strong limbs:
brothers. who came
Into this old Europe, spoiled with hates.
Which resembles misfortune, which re-
semblcs the past;
Who came into an al sUrd tumult
On our bit Of soil. where little more
OF justice and OF liberty.
Where q sort Of innocence
Left you a clean place to set your foot;
Where are you? Have you returned?
Many with the vertigo
OF new lights dancing in their eyes;
Others with bitterness in the mouth;
Others slow with the WEAKNESS
| OF burdens which they have not touched
Thus you returned
And the long line Of the horizon was drawn
| Behind you like signature.
| Thus you returned-but does something OF
you subsst
| Even now among these grasses which push
upwards
| Under sky, variable as a wind-sha1er
aspen.
Gray and blue in turn, according to the
seasonsf
Thus you returned Not all Of you. A few
| OF whom the name Is multitude
| Have gone further than their companions;
Have burrowed under the surface Of tn
| ground
Wishing to find the substance of Its being
| And these have passed
| Beyond ali living desire
Beyond the desire of the reins. of tn
heart.
| Beyond even thought itself;
More than one shovelful of earth ha
dumped down upon them.
Nothing of them remains above the ground
| Nothing except this Shadow,
Straight, crossed with one par,
With which the old religions recalled tn
SORROWS of existence:
The cross--it represents
The aspiration Of the spirit,
The obstacle which bars the way
Reared forever above each man,
1t becomes
| The sole visible symbol Of him,
There they stand, the white crosses, RAM
on rank,
In great number. strictly accounted,
Like an army still advancing.
A few figures, a name. on every cross.
The ground about them Is neatly graveiled
you who lie now
Dumb and blind. let the Joints
or your limbs dissolve;
Dispose eloquently
Not your words, but the great bones O
your jaw;
Open the CULTS OF your breast
That the earth may flter in from below
Leave your entrails to decay
In this thick. strange continent.
: The kiss OF slim ankled working girl. ru
, du Temple,
Which hung for moment suspended o
your lips;
The open arms Of Grandfather Charvasse q
St. Mhiel;
Everything that France meant to YOU
and this
AS your piled cities or the large motive
for which you died
All the fraternal proof
That between human motives there is n
gulf, not even
The colossal waters. dreaming of ten
Buried like foundation stone at the en-
of a powerful bridge,
Leave us here your bones.
Another army advances also
Irregularly, in little disorder, almos
KaiIy: