Contrerime XLIV

VOUS QUI RETOURNEZ DU CATHAI

Vous qui retournez du Cathai
     Par les Messageries,
Quand vous berçaient à leurs féeries
     L' opium ou le thé.

Dans un palais d' aventurine
     Où se mourait le jour,
Avez-vous vu Boudroulboudour,
     Princesse de la Chine,

Plus blanche en son pantalon noir
     Que nacre sous l' écaille ?
Au clair de lune, Jean Chicaille,
     Vous est-il venu voir,

En pleurant comme l' asphodèle
     Aux îles d' Ouac-Wac,
Et jurer de coudre en un sac
     Son épouse infidèle,

Mais telle qu' à travers le vent
     Des mers sur le rivage
S' envole et brille un paon sauvage
     Dans le soleil levant ?



You who return from Cathay
     By mailboat, when rocked on the sea

By the magic alchemy
     Of opium or tea.

In a palace of aventurine
     In the waning hour
The princess, Boudroulboudour,
     By you was she seen

Whiter in her black pants 

     Than nacre in the shell?
By moonlight, Jean Chicaille,
     Is it you he wants,

Weeping like the asphodel
     In the Islands of Ouac-Wac,
And swearing to sew in a sack
     His wife, unfaithful,

And untamed as a peahen
     That flies away, ablaze
In the onshore winds and the rays
     Of the rising sun?

NOTES

Badroulbadour (Arabic بدر البدور, badru l-budūr, "full moon of full moons") is an Asian princess from China whom Aladdin married in the story of Aladdin and the Magic Lamp. (The full moon as a metaphor for female beauty is common throughout the Arabian Nights).
She is also mentioned in a poem by Wallace Stevens called The Worms at Heaven's Gate in his book Harmonium.

The Worms at Heaven's Gate
Out of the tomb, we bring Badroulbadour,
Within our bellies, we her chariot.
Here is an eye. And here are, one by one,
The lashes of that eye and its white lid.
Here is the cheek on which that lid declined,
And, finger after finger, here, the hand,
The genius of that cheek. Here are the lips,
The bundle of the body and the feet.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Out of the tomb we bring Badroulbadour.

The name Badroulbadour also appears in the novel Come Dance with Me by author Russell Hoban.

Toulet has fashioned Jean Chicaille from the Chinese Yuan-Tché-Kaï , or Yuan Shikai.

The provisional government of the Republic of China was formed in Nanjing on March 12, 1912 with Sun Yat-sen as President, but Sun was forced to turn power over to Yuan Shikai, who commanded the New Army and was Prime Minister under the Qing government, as part of the agreement to let the last Qing monarch abdicate (a decision Sun would later regret). Over the next few years, Yuan proceeded to abolish the national and provincial assemblies, and declared himself emperor in late 1915. Yuan's imperial ambitions were fiercely opposed by his subordinates; faced with the prospect of rebellion, he abdicated in March 1916, and died in June of that year.

Ouac-Waco : Imaginary islands in 1001 nights inhabited only by women. 

Aventurine: reddish variety of quartz, found by chance, hence its name, containing tiny flakes of mica that reflect the light.