Nevermore, Translation of Paul Verlaine's sonnet: Nevermore

Nevermore, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet : Nevermore

(In this translation of Paul Verlaine’s « Nevermore » , I must say I felt inveigled into adhering to the fixed form by making some unnecessary allowances just in order to respect the rime scheme. It would have been better if I had abandoned the effort at laboriously keeping to the original’s end-rimes. T. Wignesan)

Souvenirs, souvenirs, what do you want of me ? Autumn
Invites the thrush to fly through the air lifeless sans tone,
And the sun beats its rays down : relentless monotone
Over the yellowing wood where claps the North wind’s thunder tone.

We were walking all by ourselves as if in a dream,
She and I, haïr and thoughts buffeted by the wind’s non-esteem.
All of a sudden, she turned towards me her looks agleam
« Which was your most beautiful day ? » did her lively golden voice beam.

Her voice soft and sonorous, a fresh timbre angelic.
A discreet smile she did redeem as a reaction cyclic,
And her blanched hand I kissed with devoutness.

Oh ! the first flowers, how their scent liberates perfumes !
And the first sounds they emit akin to charming murmur
The first « yes » that escapes the lips of virgin dames consumes !

© T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013

From: 
T. Wignesan




ABOUT THE POET ~
If I might be allowed to say so, I think my "first" love was poetry. Unfortunately for me, the British curricula at school did not put me in touch with the Metaphysical Poets, nor with the post-Georgian school. Almost all the school texts after World War II contained invariably Victorian narrative poems and some popular examples of Romantic poetry. I chanced upon a selection of T. S. Eliot's and Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, and a little later on Pope's An Essay on Man and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. That did the trick. Yet, I regret not having taken to prose in earnest earlier than the publication of my first collection: Tracks of a Tramp (1961). There's nothing like trying your hand at all kinds of prose exercises to come to grips with poetry. Or rather to see how poetry makes for the essence of speech/Speech and makes you realise how it can communicate what prose cannot easily convey. I have managed to put together several collections of poems, but never actually sought to find homes for them in magazines, periodicals or anthologies. Apart from the one published book, some of my sporadic efforts may be sampled at http://www.stateless.freehosting.net/Collection of Poems.htm


Last updated October 04, 2013