After Hours·5,462 discussions

some poetry

Tags: Off topic

El Desdichado

Je suis le ténébreux, – le veuf, – l’inconsolé,
Le prince d’Aquitaine à la tour abolie;
Ma seule étoile est morte, – et mon luth constellé
Porte le soleil noir de la Mélancolie.

Dans la nuit du tombeau toi qui m’a consolé,
Rends-moi le Pausilippe et la mer d’Italie,
La fleur qui plaisait tant a mon coeur desolé,
Et la treille ou le pampre a la rose s’allie.

Suis-je Amour ou Phébus, Lusignan ou Biron?
Mon front est rouge encore du baiser de la reine;
J’ai rêvé dans la grotte ou nage la sirène…

Et j’ai deux fois vainqueur traversé l’Achéron,
Modulant tour a tour sur la lyre d’Orphée
Les soupirs de la sainte et les cris de la fée.

Gerard de Nerval in Chimères

The Disinherited

I follow through the dusk, bereaved and unconsoled,
A prince of Aquitaine, without his shield and tower;
My only star is dead, and my starry lute in bold
Bears Dürer’s sinking sun as black sign of the sour.

Consoler you who helped in night’s dark tomb that hour
Oh give me Naples’ sea, with hills above the Bay;
My desolated heart was lifted by a flower
Upon the trellis where the vine and rose saw day.

Am I Love’s god or Light’s, brave scholar or pure knight?
My forehead still feels hot, kissed in that far-off rave,
And I have sat to dream within the mermaid’s cave…

Twice now I’ve crossed the Styx, victorious ‘gainst the night,
Transmuting one by one on Orpheus’s strings
The sighs of my lost saint, the swish of elven wings.

John A. Wills 1993.06.20

Topic

poetry

In reply to some poetry

Thanks for sharing a beautiful piece of poetry.
I will add:
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

another way out of sadness

In reply to some poetry

Zu Ende ist das Lied,
die Becher sind alle leer,
der letzte Gast auch schied,
Licht losch und feuer aus.
Der Fluß verlief im Meer,
am Himmel stand ein Stern,
ich sterbe und ich sterbe gern –
es will ein Mensch nach Haus.
Ernst Thrasolt(1945?)

It’s finished now, my lay,
the glasses empty stand,
the guests are gone away,
fire out, no lamps a-glow.
The river’s left the land,
a star’s shone in the sky,
I’m dying and I’m glad to die –
this man wants home to go.
John A. Wills 1999.08.30

Something mostly true, as nothing else is happening around here

In reply to another way out of sadness

A faithless fake blond from L.A.,
Who oft beds two men in one day,
When challenged by each
– For for faith both beseech -,
Avers that the other is gay.

Thanks

In reply to some poetry

Thanks for sharing!

[Author]

Replies