My Bohemian Life by Arthur Rimbaud

translated from the French by geul

 

I took off – hands in my busted pockets

My coat was also just so

I walked under the sky, Muse! And I was yours

Ahhhh! Of what wondrous loves I dreamt!

****

My only pair of pants had a huge hole

– Dreamy Hop-O-My-Thumb, I dropped rhymes

along the way. I lodged at the Big Dipper

–My stars in the sky rustled sweetly

****

And I listened to them, seated by the roadside

These lovely September evenings when I felt the drops

Of dew on my forehead, like invigorating wine

****

Rhyming in the fantastic shadows,

Like lyres, I pulled on the bows

of my wounded shoes, one foot next to my heart!

 

 

poem in French

El Desdichado* by Gérard de Nerval

translated from the French by geul

 

I am the Dark One, – the Widower, – the Disconsolate,
The Prince of Aquitaine whose Tower is in ruins:
My only Star is dead, – and my sequined lute
Bears the black Sun of Melancholy.

 

In the night of the Tomb, You who consoled me,
Give me back Posillipo and the Italian sea,
The flower that so pleased my desolate heart,
and the vine where the Pampre and the Rose entwine.

 

Am I Love or Phoebus? . . . Lusignan or Biron?
My forehead is scarlet still, from the Queen’s kiss;
I’ve dreamed in the Grotto where the mermaid swims. . .

 

And I, victorious, twice crossed the Acheron:
Modulating by turn on Orpheus’ lyre
The sighs of the Saint and the cries of the Fairy

 

 

*Spanish for “The Wretched One.” The title is also in Spanish in the original French poem.

 

poem in French

Mirabeau Bridge by Guillaume Apollinaire

(translated from the French by geul)

 

Under Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine
And our love
Must I remember
Joy always followed pain

Let night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

Hands together let’s stand face to face
While under
the bridge of our arms wafts
the weary wave of our eternal gaze

Let night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

Love goes away like this flowing river
Love flows away
Oh, life’s leaden pace
How violent – Hope!

Let night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

The days pass and the weeks flee
Neither the past
Nor our love returns
Under Mirabeau Bridge flows the Seine

Let night come sound the hour
The days go by I remain

click here for the original French version

“Ophélie” by Arthur Rimbaud

[translated from the French by geul]

 

I

 

On the calm and black wave where the stars sleep

The white Ophelia floats like a great lily,

Floats languorously, lying on her long veils …

– One hears tallyhos in the far off woods.

 

Here more than a thousand years the sad Ophelia

Passes, white phantom, on the black river;

Here more than a thousand years her sweet madness

Murmurs its romance to the evening breeze.

 

The wind kisses her breasts and unfurls in a corolla

Her great veils, softly cradled by the waters;

The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,

The reeds bend over her great dreaming brow.

 

The water lilies, ruffled, sigh around her;

Sometimes she wakes some nest in a sleeping alder,

where a little fluttering of wing escapes:

– A mysterious song falls from the golden stars.

 

II

 

Oh pale Ophelia! lovely like the snow!

Yes, you died, child, carried off by a river!

– It’s that the winds falling from the great mountains of Norway

Had whispered to you of bitter liberty;

 

It’s that a gust, twisting your great tresses,

Carried strange sounds to your dreamer spirit;

That your heart listened to Nature’s song

In the tree’s laments and the nights’ sighs

 

It’s that the voice of the mad seas, huge groan,

Broke your child’s breast, too human and too tender;

It’s that one April morning, a handsome pale chevalier,

A poor madman, dropped mute at your knees!

 

Sky! Love! Liberty! What dream, oh poor mad girl!

You melted against him like snow to fire:

Your great visions strangled your speech

– And terrible infinity bewildered your blue eye!

 

III

 

– And the Poet says that under the rays of the stars

You come at night looking for flowers you gather

And that he saw on the water, lying on her long veils,

The white Ophelia, floating, like a great lily.