Paul Verlaine is my next project on this thread. He lived a relatively short life, from 1844–1896, and in this time became one of the most important figures in the French symbolism movement. Here is a goo bio in him http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/paul-verlaine .
Autumn Song
With long sobs the violin-throbs of autumn wound my heart with languorous and montonous sound.
Choking and pale When I mind the tale the hours keep, my memory strays down other days and I weep;
and I let me go where ill winds blow now here, now there, harried and sped, even as a dead leaf, anywhere.
Vladimir Vysotsky, "Common Grave". Here I treat Vysotsky's songs as poem, because he himself said many a time that he is not a singer, but a "poet with guitar", a bard; and his poems are not songs, but poems that are set to music, and is supposed to be presented with rhythmic accompaniment. For all soldiers everywhere.
Listen, if stars are lit it means - there is someone who needs it. It means - someone wants them to be, that someone deems those specks of spit magnificent.
And overwrought, in the swirls of afternoon dust, he bursts in on God, afraid he might be already late. In tears, he kisses God's sinewy hand and begs him to guarantee that there will definitely be a star. He swears he won't be able to stand that starless ordeal.
Later, He wanders around, worried, but outwardly calm.
And to everyone else, he says: 'Now, it's all right. You are no longer afraid, are you?'
Listen, if stars are lit, it means - there is someone who needs it. It means it is essential that every evening at least one star should ascend over the crest of the building.
Something savage from my beloved Mayakovski, 1917: To All and Everything
No.
It can’t be.
No!
You too, beloved?
Why? What for?
Darling, look -
I came,
I brought flowers,
but, but... I never took
silver spoons from your drawer!
Ashen-faced,
I staggered down five flights of stairs.
The street eddied round me. Blasts. Blares.
Tires screeched.
It was gusty.
The wind stung my cheeks.
Horn mounted horn lustfully.
Above the capital’s madness
I raised my face,
stern as the faces of ancient icons.
Sorrow-rent,
on your body as on a death-bed, its days
my heart ended.
You did not sully your hands with brute murder.
Instead,
you let drop calmly:
“He’s in bed.
There’s fruit and wine
On the bedstand’s palm.”
Love!
You only existed in my inflamed brain.
Enough!
Stop this foolish comedy
and take notice:
I’m ripping off
my toy armour,
I,
the greatest of all Don Quixotes!
Remember?
Weighed down by the cross,
Christ stopped for a moment,
weary.
Watching him, the mob
yelled, jeering:
“Get movin’, you clod!”
That’s right!
Be spiteful.
Spit upon him who begs for a rest
on his day of days,
harry and curse him.
To the army of zealots, doomed to do good,
man shows no mercy!
That does it!
I swear by my pagan strength -
gimme a girl,
young,
eye-filling,
and I won’t waste my feelings on her.
I'll rape her
and spear her heart with a gibe
willingly.
An eye for an eye!
A thousand times over reap of revenge the crops'
Never stop!
Petrify, stun,
howl into every ear:
“The earth is a convict, hear,
his head half shaved by the sun!”
An eye for an eye!
Kill me,
bury me -
I’ll dig myself out,
the knives of my teeth by stone — no wonder!-
made sharper,
A snarling dog, under
the plank-beds of barracks I’ll crawl,
sneaking out to bite feet that smell
of sweat and of market stalls!
You'll leap from bed in the night’s early hours.
“Moo!” I’ll roar.
Over my neck,
a yoke-savaged sore,
tornados of flies
will rise.
I'm a white bull over the earth towering!
Into an elk I’ll turn,
my horns-branches entangled in wires,
my eyes red with blood.
Above the world,
a beast brought to bay,
I'll stand tirelessly.
Man can’t escape!
Filthy and humble,
a prayer mumbling,
on cold stone he lies.
What I’ll do is paint
on the royal gates,
over God’s own
the face of Razin.
Dry up, rivers, stop him from quenching his thirst! Scorn him!
Don’t waste your rays, sun! Glare!
Let thousands of my disciples be born
to trumpet anathemas on the squares!
And when at last there comes,
stepping onto the peaks of the ages,
chillingly,
the last of their days,
in the black souls of anarchists and killers
I, a gory vision, will blaze!
It’s dawning,
The sky’s mouth stretches out more and more,
it drinks up the night
sip by sip, thirstily.
The windows send off a glow.
Through the panes heat pours.
The sun, viscous, streams down onto the sleeping city.
O sacred vengeance!
Lead me again
above the dust without
and up the steps of my poetic lines.
This heart of mine,
full to the brim,
in a confession
I will pour out.
Men of the future!
Who are you?
I must know. Please!
Here am I,
all bruises and aches,
pain-scorched...
To you of my great soul I bequeath
the orchard.
I one day will die – we are always dying at times,
I wish death not on my own accord, but by a knife to my spine:
The murdered are spared, given tickets to paradise,
But I won't speak of the living, but of the rested.
My face will hit the dirt, turn on its good side,
And my fallen soul will gallop up the hill on a stolen jade horse.
In those glorious gardens of paradise, I will gather purple-pale apples.
However, these gardens are guarded and they shoot you between the eyes.
Galloping up, I see before my eyes no kind of paradise:
Only a barren desert and all around— infinite nothingness.
And in between rise cast-iron gates and
A massive Иtape of five thousand sitting on their knees.
How my horse whines! I calm him with affectionate words,
But the burrs have almost but torn away his mane.
The old man gatekeeper struggles with the bolt too long—
Failing to open it, he grunts and grumbles, and leaves.
And the exhausted mass produce not one squeak.
They squat, their knees growing numb from it all.
A den of thieves, brothers, I hear the pealing of bells!
Returning full circle, He hangs crucified on the cross.
Blessings have been bestowed upon me, would I have wanted more?
Just my friends and my wife— let her fall on my coffin.
I will pick for them some of those pale apples,
But the gardens are guarded, and they shoot you between the eyes.
I know this old man by the tears upon his worn cheeks:
It is Saint Peter— he is an apostle, I am just a fool.
Here is the orchard, with a lot of frozen apples,
But the gardens are guarded, and they have just started shooting between
the eyes.
So I drive my horse away, from this wretched hellhole.
Though the horses are begging for oats, I can't stop biting at the bit.
Along the cliff, with a lash, on the precipice, clutching apples
For you I bring them: you are waiting for me from paradise.
Who has said "All is burned into ash?
No more seed in the Earth can be sown"
Who has said that the Earth is now dead?
No! For a time she quieted down.
Motherhood can't be taken from her,
Try to scoop up an ocean with leaves
Who believed that the Earth has been burnt
No! She has blackened from grief.
Like gashes, the trenches were laid
And like gaping wounds ravens were gawking
Naked nerves of Earth, our maid,
Pain unearthy experieced knowing.
She'll endure all, she'll go on living
Don't write of Earth as if she is crippled!
Who has said that the Earth doesn't sing?
That forever she's silenced and muffled?
No! She is ringing and deafening groans,
Coming from all her wounds and her roots,
Because Earth - is really our soul,
And a soul can't be trampled by boots!
Who believed that the Earth has been burnt?
No! She just quited down for a time.
It being remembered that there were six of us with Master Villon, when that expecting presently lo be hanged he writ a ballad whereof ye know:
‘Freres humains qui apres nous vivez.'
Drink ye a skoal for the gallows tree! Francois and Margot and thee and me, Drink we the comrades merrily That said us, 'Till then' for the gallows tree!
Fat Pierre with the hook gauche-main, Thomas Larron 'Ear-the-less', Tybalde and that armouress Who gave this poignard its premier stain Pinning the Guise that had been fain To make him a mate of the 'Haulte Noblesse' And bade her be out with ill address As a fool that mocketh his drue's disdeign.
Drink we a skoal for the gallows tree! Francois and Margot and thee and me, Drink we to Marienne Ydole, That hell brenn not her o'er cruelly.
Drink we the lusty robbers twain, Black is the pitch o' their wedding dress, Lips shrunk back for the wind's caress As lips shrink back when we feel the strain
Of love that loveth in hell's disdeign, And sense the teeth through the lips that press 'Gainst our lips for the soul's distress That striveth to ours across the pain.
Drink we skoal to the gallows tree! Francois and Margot and thee and me, For Jehan and Raoul de Vallerie Whose frames have the night and its winds in fee.
Maturin, Guillaume, Jacques d'Allmain, Culdou lacking a coat to bless One lean moiety of his nakedness That plundered St. Hubert back o' the fane: Aie! the lean bare tree is widowed again For Michault le Borgne that would confess In 'faith and troth' to a traitoress, 'Which of his brothers had he slain?'
But drink we skoal to the gallows tree! Francois and Margot and thee and me:
These that we loved shall God love less And smite always at their faibleness?
Skoal!! to the gallows! and then pray we: God damn his hell out speedily And bring their souls to his 'Haulte Citee'.
Ezra Pound
Ezra Pond wrote this for Fransoa Villon, a 15 century rogue poet, who was hung for theft; Marriet, Tybald, Fat Pierre etc are characters of Villon's poems. His last poem, written in the eve of his hanging, was this one:
Je suis François, dont il me poise,
Né de Paris emprés Pontoise,
Et de la corde d'une toise
Saura mon col que mon cul poise.
I'm currently not able to find an authorized translation for it, the following is my attempt for one.
I'm Francois, like this you knew me,
I was born in Paris, near Pontois,
My neck, grabbed in the rope pretty soon
Will understand what my bum already knew.
The sentence "'En ce bourdel ou tenons nostre estat.'" /in a bordello like ours we occupy/ is from a poem of his I currently haven't located yet. "...‘Freres humains qui apres nous vivez.'.." /Britehrs humans, whoa re born after us/ is from another Villon's poem, called
The Ballad of the Hanged Men
Men my brothers who after us live, have your hearts against us not hardened. For—if of poor us you take pity, God of you sooner will show mercy. You see us here, attached. As for the flesh we too well have fed, long since it's been devoured or has rotted. And we the bones are becoming ash and dust.
Of our pain let nobody laugh, but pray God would us all absolve.
If you my brothers I call, do not scoff at us in disdain, though killed we were by justice. Yet ss you know all men are not of good sound sense. Plead our behalf since we are dead naked with the Son of Mary the Virgin that His grace be not for us dried up preserving us from hell's fulminations.
We're dead after all. Let no soul revile us, but pray God would us all absolve.
Rain has washed us, laundered us, and the sun has dried us black. Worse—ravens plucked our eyes hollow and picked our beards and brows. Never ever have we sat down, but this way, and that way, at the wind's good pleasure ceaselessly we swing 'n swivel, more nibbled at than sewing thimbles.
Therefore, think not of joining our guild, but pray God would us all absolve. Prince Jesus, who over all has lordship, care that hell not gain of us dominion. With it we have no business, fast or loose. People, here be no mocking, but pray God would us all absolve.
A grief ago She who was who I hold, the fats and the flower, Or, water-lammed, from the scythe-sided thorn, Hell wind and sea, A stem cementing, wrestled up the tower, Rose maid and male, Or, master venus, through the paddler's bowl Sailed up the sun;
Who is my grief, A chrysalis unwrinkling on the iron, Wrenched by my fingerman, the leaden bud Shot through the leaf, Was who was folded on the rod the aaron Road east to plague, The horn and ball of water on the frog Housed in the side.
And she who lies, Like exodus a chapter from the garden, Brand of the lily's anger on her ring, Tugged through the days Her ropes of heritage, the wars of pardon, On field and sand The twelve triangles of the cherub wind Engraving going.
Who then is she, She holding me? The people's sea drives on her, Drives out the father from the caesared camp; The dens of shape Shape all her whelps with the long voice of water, That she I have, The country-handed grave boxed into love, Rise before dark.
The night is near, A nitric shape that leaps her, time and acid; I tell her this: before the suncock cast Her bone to fire, Let her inhale her dead, through seed and solid Draw in their seas, So cross her hand with their grave gipsy eyes, And close her fist.
When the hurricane swirled and spread its deluge
of dark evil
onto the good green land
'they' gloated. The western skies
reverberated with joyous accounts:
"The Tree has fallen !
The great trunk is smashed! The hurricane leaves no life in the Tree!"
Had the Tree really fallen?
Never! Not with our red streams flowing forever,
not while the wine of our thorn limbs
fed the thirsty roots,
Arab roots alive
tunneling deep, deep, into the land!
When the Tree rises up, the branches
shall flourish green and fresh in the sun
the laughter of the Tree shall leaf
beneath the sun
and birds shall return
Undoubtedly, the birds shall return.
The birds shall return.
You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen,--the seven masks I have fashioned an worn in seven lives,--I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, 'Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves.'
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, 'He is a madman.' I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, 'Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks.'
Thus I became a madman.
And I have found both freedom of loneliness and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us.
But let me not be too proud of my safety. Even a Thief in a jail is safe from another thief.
The drowsy carrier sways
To the drowsy horses' tramp.
His axles winnow the sprays
Of the hedge where the rabbit plays
In the light of his single lamp.
He hears a roar behind,
A howl, a hoot, and a yell,
A headlight strikes him blind
And a stench o'erpowers the wind
Like a blast from the mouth of Hell.
He mends his swingle-bar,
And loud his curses ring;
But a mother watching afar
Hears the hum of the doctor's car
Like the beat of an angel's wing!
So, to the poet's mood,
Motor or carrier's van,
Properly understood,
Are neither evil nor good --
Ormuzd not Ahriman!
I look at you as you look at me too And fall in your eyes pinned on mine And then I think you are so beautiful When you look at me, look through me tonight. And then your eyes go somewhere else And then I see the shifting of the light In them, and then I think you are so beautiful When your eyes go there and you don't know That I have locked my gaze again on you When you don't know that I still walk my eyes Down your face, then run in disarray, You are so beautiful my heart is sinking down When you look at me and when you are away... Just keep on being you in everything you do Just keep your eyes the way you know not How much it is for me to look in them When you look at me and when you don't. DQ
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