"Le Secret " Thomas James Merton

Puisque je suis

Imaginaire

La belle vie

M’est  familière,

Et  je m’en vais

Sur un nuage

Faire un serein

Petit voyage.

Car le secret

Que je sais lire

Si je disais

Vous ferait rire.

Mon coeur est nu

Que rien ne cache

Et rien ne garde

Qu’il ne lâche,

Rien il ne sait

Rien il ne songe

Il ne vous dira

Nul mensonge.

Et mes deux yeux

Sont mappemondes

Tout  je vois

Et rien ne gronde.

J’étais en Chine

Tout à l’heure

Et  j’y ai vu

De grand bonheur.

J‘étais au centre

De la terre

Où il n’y a pas

De misère.

Si je visite

Les planètes

Et les étoiles

Plus secrètes,

Dans la nuit

La plus profonde

Je suis personne

Et  tout le monde.

Si je m’en vais

Sans souvenir

Comment pourrai-je

Revenir?

Ne cherchez pas

A me revoir

Je serai absent

Sans le savoir:

Sans figure

Et sans nom

Sans réputation

Ni renom,

Je suis un oiseau

Enchanté

Amour que Dieu

A inventé

       *

Since I am

Somebody’s dream,

I have a good life.

Sometimes I go away in my sailboat on a cloud

and take a quiet little trip.

I have a secret

which I have learned how to read inside myself;

if I told it to you,

it would make you laugh.

My heart is naked

and no one can put clothes on it,

and nothing can be put on

that will not immediately fall off.

My secret is ignorant,

it doesn’t sing songs,

no lie,

it has nothing to tell you.

My two eyes

are maps of the planet—

I see everything

and nothing upsets me.

Just now

I was in China

and saw there a great piece of happiness

that belonged to one man.

And I have been to the center of the earth,

where there is no suffering.

If on your loneliest nights,

I visit other planets

and the most secret stars of all,

besides being no one,

know that I am you

and everybody.

But if I go away

without giving you a name to remember me with,

how will I find

the right dream to return to?

You won’t have to mark down

on your calendar that I am coming back;

don’t bother to write me into your notebooks.

I will be around

when you aren’t thinking about me,

without hair or a neck,

without a nose and cheeks

no reputation—

there won’t be anything.

I am a bird

which God made.

NOTES: English translation by William Davis.