Sherry Chandler

Langueur

Je suis l’Empire à la fin de la décadence,
Qui regarde passer les grands Barbares blancs
En composant des acrostiches indolents
D’un style d’or où la langueur du soleil danse.

L’âme seulette a mal au cœur d’un ennui dense,
Là-bas on dit qu’il est de longs combats sanglants.
Ô n’y pouvoir, étant si faible aux vœux si lents,
Ô n’y vouloir fleurir un peu cette existence!

Ô n’y vouloir, ô n’y pouvoir mourir un peu!
Ah! tout est bu ! Bathylle, as-tu fini de rire?
Ah! tout est bu, tout est mangé ! Plus rien à dire!

Seul, un poème un peu niais qu’on jette au feu,
Seul, un esclave un peu coureur qui vous néglige,
Seul, un ennui d’on ne sait quoi qui vous afflige!

—Paul Verlaine

I read a little bit of French. Not enough to read Proust, but enough to find this famous Verlaine sonnet delightful, it is at once so grandiose and so self-mocking. So very French.

I ran across it reading Richard Moore and thought I’d share it here.

It seems, somehow, a poem for the George W. Bush years.

You’ll find a translation by Gertrude Hall here at Project Gutenberg. It’s not a wonderful translation: too literal. French just doesn’t treat a sentence the way English does. Anyway, I think it may be a poem that defies translation.

French can say: Seul, un poème un peu niais qu’on jette au feu,

To say: Alone, a vapid verse one tosses in the fire; sounds as silly as the silly (vapid) poem.

Moore himself renders the line Only a poem, a little dull, dropped in the fire;, less literal but more true to the original I think.

Brooks Carver, author of Pilgrim Heart, shares this photo of a luna moth, a creature rarely sighted, that he took in his back yard:

Brooks at least is having a good summer for a farmer up there in Illinois:

Timely rains here. Corn and beans are spectacular. Looks like a rare good year for farmers. (Like a sighting of the Luna Moth.) Price and yield both good.

He must, as the saying goes, be holding his mouth right. Second cutting of alfalfa on our farm yielded a whopping 25 rolls as draught takes its toll. Farmers are already feeding hay to their livestock because the usually lush grass of the Bluegrass is drying up.

Meanwhile, my old friend in Yorktown, Texas reports:

We have not had flooding here in Yorktown but some heavy rains and some just drizzle so you can’t get out and do anything. I planted 36 periwinkle plants like I do every summer because they tolerate hot dry weather and this year they all died!