If I should die out there on the battle-front,
You’d weep, O Lou my darling, a single day,
And then my memory would die away
As a shell dies bursting over the battle-front,
A beautiful shell like a flowered mimosa spray.

And then this memory exploded in space
Would flood the whole wide world beneath my blood:
The mountains, valleys, seas and the stars that race,
The wondrous suns that ripen far in space,
As golden fruits round General Baratier would.

Forgotten memory, living in all things,
I’d redden the nipples of your sweet pink breasts,
I’d blush your mouth, your hair’s now blood-like rings.
You wouldn’t grow old at all; these lovely things
Would ever make you young for their brave behests.

The fatal spurting of my blood on the world
Would give more lively brightness to the sun,
More color to flowers, to waves more speedy run.
A marvelous love would descend upon the world,
Would be, in your lonely flesh, more strongly grown.

And if I die there, memory you’ll forget —
Sometimes remember, Lou, the moments of madness,
Of youth and love and dazzling passion’s heat —
My blood will be the burning fountain of gladness!
And be the happiest being the prettiest yet,

O my only love and my great madness!

L ong night is falling,
O n us foreboding
U shers a long, long fate of blood.

Poem for Lou – Guillaume Apollinaire translated by Hubert Creekmore

Here’s the original French version, which is similar in terms of structure as the English translation above, apart from the end.

Si je mourais là-bas sur le front de l’armée,
Tu pleurerais un jour, ô Lou, ma bien-aimée.
Et puis mon souvenir s’éteindrait comme meurt
Un obus éclatant sur le front de l’armée,
Un bel obus semblable aux mimosas en fleur.

Et puis ce souvenir éclaté dans l’espace
Couvrirait de mon sang le monde tout entier :
La mer, les monts, les vals et l’étoile qui passe,
Les soleils merveilleux mûrissant dans l’espace
Comme font les fruits d’or autour de Baratier.

Souvenir oublié, vivant dans toutes choses,
Je rougirais le bout de tes jolis seins roses,
Je rougirais ta bouche et tes cheveux sanglants.
Tu ne vieillirais point, toutes ces belles choses
Rajeuniraient toujours pour leurs destins galants.

Le fatal giclement de mon sang sur le monde
Donnerait au soleil plus de vive clarté,
Aux fleurs plus de couleur, plus de vitesse à l’onde,
Un amour inouï descendrait sur le monde,
L’amant serait plus fort dans ton corps écarté…

Lou, si je meurs là-bas, souvenir qu’on oublie,
— Souviens-t’en quelquefois aux instants de folie,
De jeunesse et d’amour et d’éclatante ardeur, —
Mon sang c’est la fontaine ardente du bonheur !
Et sois la plus heureuse étant la plus jolie,

Ô mon unique amour et ma grande folie !

Nîmes, le 30 Janvier 1915 — SI JE MOURAIS LÀ-BA – Apollinaire
Poèmes à Lou

Guillaume Apollinaire offers personal insights into what it meant to go the frontlines of WWI in Poem for Lou. He takes a more direct approach about life, love, eroticism, war, and death than the Romanticists more dramatic approach. I say that because Poem for Lou seems to have less universal metaphors and imagery than Romantic poetry.

But Poem for Lou still contains strong Romanticist elements, especially as Apollinaire uses metaphors based on nature. For instance, he describes Lou’s memory of him that would explode “in space” before flooding “The wondrous suns that ripen far in space / As golden fruits round General Baratier would.” He also writes, “My blood will be the burning fountain of gladness!”

For comparison, Wilfred Owen’s Dulce Et Decorum Est, published in 1920, two years after his death as a soldier during World War I (WWI), remains one of the better known WWI war poems. Owen does not romanticize war like some of the Romanticists did, despite being written in poetic form. The poem seems beautiful in terms of its rhythm. Yet its details contrast this beauty completely, as Owen describes the brutal details of war, the struggle to survive, and the death of those around him.

Interestingly, Apollinaire’s Zone (English translation and original French version), published in 1913, seems to break all the rules. The poem contains no punctuation apart from the apostrophe and accents used in certain French words, which seem necessary. This omission creates a stream of consciousness, a common feature of modernist literature. But given that Apollinaire published Zone in 1913, this poem is one of the first examples. The poem also varies in line and stanza length. It does have a half-rhyming couplet scheme, however.

Yet, Apollinaire wrote Poem for Lou in 1915 with a strict rhyme scheme and 5-line stanza length apart from the single final line. I think the difference between this strictness and the free nature of Zone is modernism. Apollinaire wrote Poem for Lou for his object of love, Louise de Coligny-Châtillon, one of the first French female aviators, whom he met in September 1914 shortly before going to war. The couple broke up in February 1915 but maintained correspondence despite Apollinaire fighting on the frontlines in Champagne, France.

Modernist poets wrote using different personas. The person writing Zone and Poem for Lou is Apollinaire, yet you wouldn’t imagine that if his name weren’t written on both. One is modernist, the other romanticist, which are completely different because modernism was a reaction to romanticist excess. Poem for Lou, essentially a love poem, was written for one person, the object of Apollinaire’s love. Apollinaire may never have intended for it to be published. He did publish Zone for the public. Could you imagine him writing his thoughts about his relationship Louise de Coligny-Châtillon as a stream of consciousness, then send that to her? That’d be creepy!

Poem for Lou was published posthumously in the 1950s as part of the Poèmes à Lou collection of poems by Guillaume Apollinaire. Apollinaire dedicated these 76 poems to Louise de Coligny-Châtillon, which he wrote on the back of correspondence letters to her. The 220 letters were published separately. Poem for Lou was dated, January 30, 1915, right before the couple split in February 2015.

Perhaps Apollinaire knew they would split, and thus thought Louise de Coligny-Châtillon would not care if he died. But I’m not so sure about that. I think Apollinaire perfectly describes the reality of death, that those left behind will eventually forget about you. Your body and even your ideas may give birth to new life and ideas on earth, yet you’ll be forgotten and gone nevertheless.

I am writing about Apollinaire and you are reading about him, yet neither of us know what he was really like as a person, meaning he is still forgotten forever as he suggest will happen in Poem for Lou.