This is my last post as Author of the Week. It’s been an exciting experience. Since this is the Best American Poetry website, I’ve decided to end the week with three poems I translated by Charles Baudelaire, my favorite French poet. This is my first attempt to translate poetry, and I hope that you’ll enjoy them. Please listen as you read.
Sincere thanks to all of you have read and responded to these posts.
Connections
Nature is a temple, where living pillars
Sometimes utter indistinct words.
We wander through it amidst forests of symbols
That observe us with familiar looks.
Like long echoes blending from afar,
In a deep, dark unity
As vast as darkness or light,
Smells, colors, and sounds speak to one another.
There are smells as fresh as children’s flesh,
As sweet as oboes, green as prairies
--And others, corrupt, rich, and triumphant,
That spread without end:
Amber, musk, benzoin, and incense,
Which sing of the rapture of the mind and the senses.
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, 1857
Translation by Richard Kutner © 2017
Autumn Song
I.
Soon we will be plunged into icy darkness.
Farewell, bright glow of our too-short summers!
I can already hear the echo in the courtyards
As logs fall to the pavement with a funereal thump.
All of winter will penetrate my soul: anger,
Hate; chills; horror; drudgery,
And, like the sun in its polar hell,
My heart will be only a frozen block of red.
Trembling, I listen to the crash of every log;
There is nothing to mute the sound of the mounting gallows.
My mind is like a tower, collapsing
Beneath the blows of a relentless battering ram.
Rocked by this monotonous pounding, I seem to hear
A coffin being hastily nailed shut.
For whom?—Only yesterday it was summer; now autumn is here!
This mysterious sound rings like a departure.
II.
I love the greenish light of your long eyes,
My lovely, yet today all is bitter to me.
Nothing--not your love, not your bed, nor the hearth--
Can compare with the sun glistening on the sea.
And yet, love me, tender heart! Be a mother,
Even for one so ungrateful--for one so bad;
Mistress or sister, be the fleeting sweetness
Of a glorious autumn or a setting sun.
So quick a task! The tomb awaits, its appetite so huge!
Ah! While my head rests on your knees
As I mourn the white, torrid summer, let me taste
The sweet, yellow rays of this late fall.
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, 1861 edition
Translation by Richard Kutner © 2017
Spleen LXVIII
When the sky, heavy and low, weighs down like a lid
On the moaning soul, prey to long bouts of ennui,
And, embracing the arc of the horizon,
Spills upon us a black light sadder than the night,
When all the earth is transformed into a damp dungeon
Where Hope, like a bat,
Beats its timid wings against the walls,
Knocking its head on the rotten ceiling,
When the rain, falling in thick, dark strands
Mirrors the bars of a vast prison,
And a host of vile, silent spiders
Spin their webs at the back of our minds,
Bells suddenly cry out with fury,
Launching a terrible scream into the sky,
Like homeless, wandering spirits
Moaning incessantly.
--And long hearses, without drums or music,
Pass slowly through my soul; Hope,
Vanquished, sobs, as Anguish, atrocious and despotic,
Plants its black Flag on my bowed skull.
Charles Baudelaire, Les Fleurs du mal, 1857 edition
Translation by Richard Kutner © 2017
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