X-3 HERCULE AU JARDIN
      
Aux racines de nuit enter nos ceps arides!
Créatures du vent, oublieux du brasier,
Je croyais que la rose est l'oiseau du rosier
Car je ne voyais pas vos tiges, Hespérides!

Bouche trouvant le souffle ou halète l'Atride,
Vous qui vêtez de fleurs les sucs que vous puisez,
L'invisible tressant comme on tresse l'osier,
Jardin double, abritez mon compagnon putride!

Je connais le danger de l'Héliade. Sa
Flamme en poudre change le pré qu'il délaissa
Et le désert s'étale où régna sa folie.

Seul qui vit son jumeau nocturne, qui passa
Le fleuve dont le flot du clepsydre délie
Deviendra le jardin qui germe, multiplie.

Michel Galiana (c) 1990

X-3 HERCULES IN THE GARDEN
      
Onto stubs of the night to graft our barren vine!
Creatures born of the wind, forgetful of the flame,
I thought the rose a bird on the shrub, what a shame!
Not seeing, Hesperides, all your stems in a line.

To panting Orestes you're the mouth breathing air 
And you coat with blossoms the oozing saps you draw,
Weave the invisible as you would wisps of straw,
Twin garden, harbour my putrid other self there!

For well I know the risk Phaeton has run: The blaze
Turned the meads where he passed into a dusty maze
And a desert spreads there where his folly prevailed.

Only he who saw his nocturnal twin, who passed
The river whose wave from the clepsydra unties
May become a garden that sprouts and multiplies.