Stéphane Mallarmé

 One Toss of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance (1897)

[Translated by Christopher Mulrooney]

ONE TOSS OF THE DICE

NEVER

NOT EVEN WHEN CAST IN ETERNAL
CIRCUMSTANCES

FROM THE DEPTHS OF A SHIPWRECK

WHETHER the

Abyss

whitened

becalmed

furious

under an inclination
   glides desperately

with wing

its own
in advance refallen with a difficulty in setting up flight
and covering the outpourings
cutting utterly the leaps

very interiorly resumes

the shade buried in the deep by that alternative sail

as to adapt 
to its wingspan

its gaping depth as the hull

of a vessel

tilted to one or the other side

THE MASTERoutside old calculations where the maneuver with age forgotten

arisen
   inferringlong ago he grasped the helm

of that conflagration at his feet of the unanimous horizon

there is preparing stirring and mixing in the fist that might clutch it as one menaces a destiny and the winds

   the unique Number which cannot be another

Spirit to hurl it in the tempest refolding the division and passing proud
hesitates
a corpse by the arm set apart from the secret it keeps
rather
than to play
like a hoary maniac
the game
in the name of waves one invades the chief flows like a submissive beard

shipwreck that direct from man

sans ship
no matter

where vain

ancestrally to not open the hand clenched beyond the useless head

legacy in the disappearance

to someone ambiguous

the last immemorial demon

having from null regions induced
the old man towards this supreme conjunction with probability

he his puerile shade
caressed and polished and rendered and laved made supple by the wave and abstracted from the hard bones lost between the planks

born of a gambol

the sea with the grandfather tempting or the grandfather against the sea an idle chance

Betrothal
whose veil of illusion gushed their phobia like the phantom of a gesture

will totter
will fall

madnessWILL ABOLISH

AS IF

an insinuation simple

in silence rolled with irony
or
the mystery
precipitated
howled

in some nearby whirlpool of hilarity or horror

flutters around the gulf

without strewing it
nor fleeing

and cradles the virgin index

AS IF

plume solitary distraught

save that encounters or skims it a midnight cap
and immobilizes
in velvet crumpled by a guffaw somber

that rigid whiteness

derisory

in opposition to the sky

too much
for not marking
exiguously
whosoever

bitter prince of the reef

puts it on like the heroic
irresistible but contained
by his little reason virile
in lightning

concerned
expiatory and pubescent
mutelaughter

that

IF

The lucid and seigniorial aigrette of vertigo
with invisible brow
scintillates
then shadows
a stature dainty tenebrous erect
in its siren torsion
time
to slap
with impatient scales ultimate bifurcated

a rock

false manor
right away
evaporated in mists

that imposed
a limit on infinity

IT WAS
stellar issueNUMBER

EXISTED HE otherwise than scattered hallucination of agony

COMMENCED HE AND CEASED HE upwelling but denied and closed when apparent
at last
by some profusion widespread in rarity CIPHERED HE

evidence of the sum if only one
ILLUMINATED HE

IT WOULD BE
worse
no
more nor less
indifferently but as muchCHANCE

Falls
the plume
rhythmic suspense of the sinister
to bury itself
in original foams
not long ago whence sprang up its delirium to a peak
withered
by the identical neutrality of the gulf

NOTHING

of the memorable crisis when might the event have been accomplished in view of every result null human

WILL HAVE TAKEN PLACE
an ordinary elevation pours absence

BUT THE PLACE
inferior lapping whatsoever as if to disperse the act void
abruptly which if not
by its falsehood
might have founded
perdition

in those regions
of the wave
in which all reality dissolves

EXCEPT at the altitude PERHAPS as far as a place fuses with beyond

apart from the interest
as to it signaled
in general
according to such obliquity by such declivity
of fires
toward

this must be
the Septentrion also North

A CONSTELLATION

cold from forgetting and desuetude
not so much
that it does not enumerate
on some surface vacant and superior
the successive clash
sidereally
of a total count in formation
watching
doubting
rolling
shining and meditating

before stopping
at some last point that consecrates it

Every Thought sends forth one Toss of the Dice