Dustin Junkert — TWO POEMS

new translations after Paul Verlaine

MARINE

L’Océan sonore
Palpite sous l’oeil
De la lune en deuil
Et palpite encore,
Tandis qu’un éclair
Brutal et sinistre
Fend le ciel de bistre
D’un long zigzag clair,
Et que chaque lame,
En bonds convulsifs,
Le long des récifs,
Va, vient, luit et clame,
Et qu’au firmament,
Où l’ouragan erre,
Rugit le tonnerre
Formidablement.

The bad ocean
throbs, watched
moonfully from On High
in smooth flotation

A sonorous sky flash
bent sinister
reorganizes the conflict
Gods against Gods

The waves reflect a battle
that is weightless
it is 3:30
the wind a shining rave

The sky has firmament also
and your eye a hurricane
you learn what to love, meditations
during disaster

SPLEEN

Les roses étaient toutes rouges
Et les lierres étaient tout noirs.
Chère, pour peu que tu te bouges
Renaissent tous mes désespoirs.
Le ciel était trop bleu, trop tendre,
La mer trop verte et l’air trop doux.
Je crains toujours, — ce qu’est d’attendre
Quelque fuite atroce de vous.
Du houx à la feuille vernie
Et du luisant buis je suis las,
Et de la campagne infinie
Et de tout, fors de vous, hélas

The horses are all dead
meaning the hay will stay uneaten

unlike some plums, your head turns
despair on its bloomed head

What is the sky too blue for
compared to what?

a precedented and grumpy flight might
satisfy

our true home, the woods!
are also finite and all there is to do is read

and write ecstatically to New York
publishers of the age

Dustin Junkert started writing in order to impress girls. Most girls aren’t all that impressed by writing, he has found. But here’s hoping. Dustin lives in Portland, OR. He recently had an essay published in the New York Times, and poems in The Journal, South Carolina Review, the minnesota review, Weber, Georgetown Review, GW Review and New Delta Review.

“These translations are quite liberal, in fact it might be more proper to say “after Verlaine” rather than calling them translations. That all depends on what you look for in a translation: accuracy or magic. I agree with Salman Rushdie that ‘something can always be gained in translation, something of the world of the translator rubbing on the world of the author.’ “

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