Stanzas 1—6

The first thing to note about "The Alchemy of Day" is that it is an English translation of a French original. Because of this, and because critics note that Hébert's poetry, like much of modern French poetry, is notably difficult to translate into English, one can best understand the poem by focusing on the conceptual meaning of the lines, as opposed to placing undue importance on single words, which may not be what the author intended.

The first line starts out with an address to an unnamed "you" character. The speaker in the poem tells this character: "Let no girl wait on you on that day when you bind your wild / wounds, bloody beast, to the black pine's low branches." Already, the poet has invoked the "day" from the title, but as of yet, one does not know what this day is. The "wild...