When you are seventeen you aren't really serious.
One fine evening, you've had enough of beer and lemonade!
and the rowdy cafes with their dazzling lights!
You go walking beneath the green lime trees of the promenade.
The lime trees smell good on fine evenings in June! The air is so soft
sometimes, you close your eyelids; the wind, full of sounds
the town's not far away - carries odours of vines, and odours of beer...
---
You're in love. Taken until the month of August. You're in love.
Your sonnets make Her laugh, all your friends disappear, you are not quite the thing.
Then your adored one, one evening, condescends to write to you!...
That evening...
you go back again to the dazzling cafes, you ask for beer,
or for lemonade... You are not really serious when you are seventeen, and
there are lime trees in leaf on the promenade.