GERARD DE NERVAL~

April

And now the dust and the fine days,

An azure sky and walls ablaze

With burning light, long nights, no breeze,

And nothing green; a ruddy shine

Just barely stains, like a red wine,

The black branches of the large trees.

Upon me this fine weather weighs.

Only after long rainy days

Should spring then come, Nature's daughter,

Turning rosy and turning green,

Like a blooming nymph in a scene

Who, smiling, springs from the water.

 __________________________

Gerard de Nerval

Little Castles of Bohemia

translated by Napoleon Jeffries

Wakefield Press 2025

JEAN FOLLAIN ~

Day on Fire

The door shined in fiery daylight

but the braids of the women there

held still

one of them leaned over the waters on the cauldron

and on a piece of porcelain

a painted bird had worn itself out with singing.

The messenger was seen to come in

with a letter and a golden loaf in his hands

he spoke

then it was dead silence

and the whole garden gave up its scent.

Landscape with Two Laborers

The countyside was calm

a girl was washing her unblemished leg

and the hours

etched themselves into the cloth they faded

attacking the damask flowers.

The pages of a schoolbook

had been carried off by the wind

up above the eglantines

and down the length of the path

to ditches filled with clever beasts

to embankments covered in those herbs

favored for soothing teas

two laborers took their time

telling each other

the secrets of working with wood.

The Notice

The child pushing along the ring of a barrel

as his makeshift hoop

runs alone and shouts

but to the one who has just spelled out

beneath the N and the eagle of Empire

the draft notice

the old man says simply

in the blazing sun

while drinking a foamy pear cider:

"the next century will be worse"

though lovers go by singing.

Edge of the Hearth

The outbuildings with no real use

are left to the rains

a peasant woman

has an edge of the black hearth

for a seat

the evening turns

in swirls of her breath

the wind in the hollow tree

why beings and things

she thinks

and not nothing

_______________________________

Jean Follain

Earthly

The Song Cave 2025

translated by Andrew Seguin

MARIE-CLAIRE BANCQUART ~

 

Scent of linden trees

their pollen in rain.

I inhabit the visible

by that, I will never be deserted

under the trees

stones and beetles    

are enough for my geography

my vertical green

the night under my feet:

ecumenical landscape.

Where on earth, it doesn't matter

it's here, in the moment,

beginning and end.

_________________

Marie-Claire Bancquart

Every Minute Is First

selected late poems

translated from the French by Jody Gladding

Milkweed Editons, 2024

JULES LAFORGUE ~

 

Moonlight

Will we ever live on that star? — the thought

Itself has me reeling

But Moon, when you move through August's

Evening skies in enchanting silence, I salute you!

Also when you careen, like some dismasted ship,

Through heaving black breakers of cloud!

Oh to ascend, one of the lost, and slake

My thirst on your baptismal moonshine!

Stricken by blindness, your beacon is lethal

To Icarus-types, left stranded and grieving

Sterile suicide-eye-preside

Over convocations of the world-weary.

Ice-cold skull, heap ridicule on our bald

and terminally ill bureaucracies.

O pill of ultimate fatigue, infuse

Yourself into our stubborn brains.

And chlamys-clad Diana, fermenting

Love unleashes barbs from your quiver

Which infect — ah! — the wingless, the hearts of those

Who would do good  on earth!

Star prone to unheard floods, I pray

That one of your chaste, and anti-febrile rays veers, tonight,

In my direction, drenches my sheets, drives

Me to wash my hands of life!

 ________________________

Lunar Solo, selected poems

Jules LaForgue

translated by Mark Ford

The Song Cave, 2023

YVES BONNEFOY ~

 

YV E S    B O N N E F O Y

Seagull Books

2020

RENE CHAR

 

The Resourceful Bulrush

I hear rain even when it's not the rain,

Just nightfall;

I rejoice in dawn even when it's not the dawn,

But my own white pulp stirring among the mud.

A child's mouth ruffles me with its teeth.

Love of the silent waters!

The hawthorn has the nightingale.

I have the spells that bind.

__________________________

Rene Char

The Inventors

translated by Mark Hutchinson

Seagull Books, 2015

HYPNOS (THE LEAVES), RENE CHAR ~

 

Although the translator wishes to be

a bit snippy about previous translations

of the Rene Char masterpiece — ignore him

and seek them out — likewise take this

new edition in hand and read it with

the same gusto & courage

of the poet

_____________________________

237

In the darkness of our lives, there is not one place

for Beauty. The whole place is for Beauty.

Rene Char, 

Hypnos

1946

WALKS w/PAUL CELAN & JEAN DAVIE ~

 

R E A D       M E

RE-READING PIERRE REVERDY ~

On Tiptoe



Nothing stays anymore

               between my ten fingers

A vanishing shadow

               At the center

               a footstep

Choke off the voice that rises too high

That moaned and wouldn't die

That went too fast

It was who put a stop to this magnificent ardor

          Hope and my pride

              have passed on the wind

The leaves fell

           while the birds were counting

                             the drops of water

The lamps went out behind the curtains

Not so fast

Be careful you'll break everything with so much noise






Perspective



Did the same

Car carry me away

                             I see where you came from

                             You turn your head

Midnight

On the moon

Just struck

                              At the street corner

                              Everything is turned around

I saw her face

Even her hands

                              The last star

                               Is in the garden

Just like the first

Think of tomorrow

                               Where will they be

                                The thoughtless dead

When the wall vanishes

                                 The sky will fall







The World Before Me



Some time ago

Clear night

New sunrise

Next day

An old man on his knees holds out his hands

Animals ran all along the road



I sat me down

I have dreamed

A window opens on my head

Nobody home

A man goes by behind the hedge



The countryside where a single bird sings

Somebody is afraid

Somebody is amused

Down there between two little children

Joy

You against me

Rain washes away tears



You can't walk the narrow path

You go back the same way

There is a gate

Something just fe;;

Down behind there



His shadow bigger than himself

goes around the earth

And me I just sit there and don't dare look





__________________
Pierre Reverdy
Selected Poems
Translated by Kenneth Rexroth
New Directions, 1969






Around midnight, on hands & knees, I pulled
this old friend up off the bottom shelf and began
to read and instead of reading on and on I put in the
bookmark to save for the next night and the next. . .

RIMBAUD IN JAVA ~

R E A D     M E

Editions Didier Miller

2011

ALAIN-FOURNIER ~

Round Dance



                                         'We won't go back to the wood
                                                  They've cut down all the laurels'





The evening's soft, the round is wild,

Give me your hands, you playful child,

Come and dance beneath the limes.



Your skirts fly off to distant climes,

The evening's blue, my spirit wild,

So turn again beneath the limes! . . .



*



Let's turn until the chill sets in,

Dancing here with 'the lovely one'.



*



The poppet joins the turning round

The square is brown, the dance is blond,

The doorsteps listen to the sound.



My spirit is that little blond;

Of wanderlust we're not so fond,

Let's stay and dance this local round.



*



Dance until the chill sets in,

Turning here with 'the lovely one'.



*



One more, before we're told to stop.

Yes, before we're all grown up,

Let's dance and then we'll go to sleep.



A last dance under the chestnut trees,

A last dance, turning as we please

Till dying brings us to our knees . . .



*



Till dying brings us to our knees.



____________________________

Alain-Fournier
Poems
Translated from the French
Carcanet Press, U.K.

JEAN FOLLAIN ~

The Secret



Where are you lying

secret of the world

with so strong an odor?

Sometimes a gentle workman

in the feverish town

falls from a scaffolding

and the wind always smells of lilac;

a tenacious misfortune

lodges in the loveliest bodies

hands tighten in the evening

an animal sleeps

within walls rough by men

peace forever decays

and war no longer

has an age.








Death



From the bones of animals

the factory had made these buttons

which fastened

a bodice over the bust

of a gorgeous working-girl

when she fell

one of the buttons came off in the night

and the water of the gutters took it

and laid it down

in a private garden

with a crumbling plaster statue

Pomona

naked and laughing








Life



A child is born

in a vast landscape

half a century later

he is simply a dead soldier

and that was the man

whom one saw appear

and set down on the ground a whole

heavy sack of apples

two or three of which rolled

a sound among the sounds of a world

where the bird sang

on the stone of the door-sill.





————————————

JEAN FOLLAIN
W.S. MERWIN (translator)
Transparence of the World
Atheneum 1969





what a book to discover back then, as now!

GEORGES BATAILLE ~

I lose you in the wind

I count you among the dead

a necessary rope

between wind and heart









I have nothing to do with this world

if not to burn

I love you in dying



Your absence of repose

a mad wind whistles in your head

you are sick to have laughed

you fled me for a better void

that tore your heart



Tear me up if you want to

my eyes find you in the night

burning with fever









I'm cold at heart I tremble

from the depths of suffering I call you

with an inhuman cry

as if I gave birth



You strangle me like death

I know this miserably

I find you only in agony

you are beautiful like death



All words strangle me









Star pieces the sky

cry like death

strangle



I don't want life

strangling me is a kindness

the star that rises

is cold like a dead woman









Excite me, eyes

I love the night

my heart is black



Push me into the night

everything is false

I suffer



The world feels death

birds fly eyes slashed open

you are somber as a black sky









The festival will begin

in filth and fear



The stars will fall

when death approaches.









You are the horror of the night

I love you like a death rattle

you are weak like death



I love you like delirium

you know that my head dies

you are the immensity the fear



You are beautiful like slaughter

enormous heart I suffocate

your stomach is naked as the night.









You bring me straight to the end

the agony has begun

I have nothing more to tell you

I speak from the grave

and the dead are silent.








Limpid from head to toe

fragile as the dawn

the wind has shattered the heart



For the duration of anguish

the black night is a church

wherein one slaughters a pig



Trembling from head to toe

fragile as death

agony my great sister



You are colder than the earth.





____________________

Georges Bataille (1897 - 1962 )
The Poetry of Georges Bataille
translated and introduction by Stuart Kendall
SUNY Press / NY 2018

ROBERT DESNOS ~

Letter to Youki


My love,

Our suffering would be unbearable if we couldn't think of it as a passing and sentimental illness. Our rediscoveries will adorn our life for at least thirty years. As for me, I'm taking a deep drink of youth and I'll come back to you full of love and strength! During our separation a birthday, mine, was the occasion of a long fantasy about you. Will my letter reach you in time for your birthday? I would've liked to give you 100,000 American cigarettes, a dozen dresses from the great couturiers, an apartment on the Seine, a car, the cottage in the Compiegne forest, the one on Belle-Isle and a little four-sous bouquet. While I'm gone, keep flowers around all the time; I'll pay you back for them. All the rest, I promise it to you later.

But above all else, drink a bottle of good wine and think of me. I hope our friends won't forget to visit you that day. I thank them for their courage and devotion. About a week ago I got a package from J-L Barrault. Kiss him for me, and Madeleine Renaud too; the package is proof my letter got through. I haven't gotten an answer; I'm waiting for one every day. Kiss everyone in the family, Lucien, Aunt Juliet, Georges. If you run into Passeur's brother, give him my best and ask him if he knows anybody who can help you if you need it. What's happening with my books at the printer's? I've got a lot of ideas for poems and novels. I regret not having the freedom or the time to write them. But you can tell Gallimard that within three months after I get back he'll have the manuscript of a love story in an entirely new genre. I'm ending this letter for today.

Today, July 15th, I got four letters from Barrault, Julia, Dr. Benet and Daniel. Thank them apologize for me for not answering. I'm allowed only one letter a month. Still no word from you, but they send me news of you; that will be for the next time. I hope that letter is our life to come.

                                                                                     Robert

                                                                             Buchenwald


—————————
Robert Desnos
The Voice of Robert Desnos
(Selected Poems)
translated by William Kulik
The Sheep Meadow Press
2004

FROM MEDIEVAL TO MODERN TIMES ~

Everyman's Library 2017

Pocket Poets

edited by

Patrick McGuinness

translated by many greats

TOGETHER STILL ~

R E A D      M E

Seagull Books 2017

APOLLINAIRE MEETS PADGETT ~

Inscription for the Tomb of the Painter
Henri Rousseau Customs Inspector



Dear Rousseau you hear us

Hello

From Delaunay his wife Mister Queval and me

Let our luggage go duty-free through heaven's gate

We'll bring you brushes colors and canvas

So your holy leisure in the real light

You can devote it to painting

The way you did my portrait

The face of the stars






There



There are some terrific little bridges

There is my heart that beats for you

There is a sad woman on the road

There is a nice little cottage in a garden

There are six soldiers having an insanely good time

There are my eyes that search for your image



There is a charming stand of trees on the hill

And an old National Guardsman pissing as we go by

There is a poet who dreams of lil Lou

There is an exquisite lil Lou in that big Paris

There is some artillery in a forest

There is a shepherd grazing his sheep

There is my life that belongs to you

There is my fountain pen that flows and flows

There is a curtain of delicate delicate poplars

There is my past which is really past

There are narrow streets in Menton where we loved each other

There is a little girl from Sospel who whips her friends

There is my horsewhip in my oat bag

There are Belgian rail cars on the move

There is my love

There is all of life

I adore you



___________________________

Guillaume Apollinaire
translated by Ron Padgett
New York Review of Books
Z O N E, Selected Poems
2015


Listen to the soldier read:
https://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Apollinaire/Apollinaire-Guillaume_01_Le-Pont-Mirabeau_1913.mp3