Deeper Silence

[rejectomorph]

No birds, no beasts, no clouds, no rain, no wind. Once the moon had set, all the night was nothing but stars and silence. If not for the slow shift of constellations, I might have though the world had stopped, and every living thing had ceased to breathe, and I been left alone but for the single cat, twitching now and then with dreams as she napped atop the heater vent. The only sound was the occasional turning of my book's pages.

I finished the cleaning just in time. As I put on a jacket to go out and watch the stars a while, my left shoulder went out of joint. It had better pop back in by Monday. I can't cook one-handed.



Sunday Verse

L'Invitation au Voyage

by Charles Baudelaire

       My child, my sister,
                           dream
      How sweet all things would seem
Were we in that kind of land to live together,
      And there love slow and long,
      There love and die among
Those scenes that image you, that sumptuous weather.
      Drowned suns that glimmer there
      Through cloud-disheveled air
Move me with such a mystery as appears
      Within those other skies
      Of your treacherous eyes
When I behold them shining through their tears.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure. 

      Furniture that wears
      The lustre of the years
Softly would glow within our glowing chamber,
      Flowers of rarest bloom    
      Proffering their perfume
Mixed with the vague fragrances of amber;
      Gold ceilings would there be,
      Mirrors deep as the sea,
The walls all in Eastern splendor hung-
      Nothing but should address
      The soul's loneliness,
Speaking her sweet and secret native tongue.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

      See, sheltered from the swells
      There in the still canals
Those drowsy ships that dream of sailing forth;
      It is to satisfy
      Your least desire, they ply
Hither through all the waters of the earth.
      The sun at close of day
      Clothes the fields of hay,
Then the canals, at last the town entire
      In hyacinth and gold:
      Slowly the land is rolled
Sleepward under a sea of gentle fire.

There, there is nothing else but grace and measure,
Richness, quietness, and pleasure.

-translated by Richard Wilbur



Now I faintly hear a whisper of breeze, once again rising before the sun. The common world comes back to life. Another day much like yesterday, I suspect. The season threatens to settle into monotony. I hope for rain to come soon, and wash away the last leaves, and my incipient ennui as well.

Comments

[waning-estrogen.livejournal.com]

I very much like this one.
at least, I very much like the translation.

[rejectomorph]

Good translations of Baudelaire are hard to find. I know of no others by Wilbur, though he has done a few translations of works by other French poets.