Paul Verlaine Poetry

You See We Need…
(Romances Sans Paroles: Arriettes Oubliées IV)

You see we need to pardon everything. That’s the way we’ll be happiest, and if our lives have moments that sting, at least we’ll weep together and be blessed. O, sister-souls as we are, if we could blend a childlike gentleness with vague desires of travelling far from women and from men, in the strange forgetfulness of what exiles. Let’s be two children: let’s be two little girls in love with nothing, amazed by all life brings, pale with fear beneath the leaves’ chaste curls not knowing they’ve been forgiven everything.

Oh Sad, Sad…
(Romances Sans Paroles: Arriettes Oubliées VII)

Oh sad, sad forever my soul because, because of a girl. How can my hurt be assuaged though my heart is disengaged? Though my heart, though my soul are far away from that girl, how can my heart be assuaged though my heart is disengaged? And my over-sensitive heart says to my soul: by what art by what art has it come to be this proud exile, this misery? My soul says to my heart: do I know myself what trapped us or why we’re with her though we were sent away, although we’re far from her today?

I Still See You…
(Romances Sans Paroles: Birds In The Night V)

I still see you. I opened the door. You lay in bed as if you were weary. But, O light body that love bore, you leapt up naked, crying and happy. Oh what kisses, what mad embraces! I myself laughed through my tears. Surely those moments will leave their traces, saddest of all and best it appears. I don’t want to see your smile, or worse your kind eyes, for that reason, or you, in short, who one must curse, exquisite snare: only the ghost of that season.

Spleen
(Romances Sans Paroles)

The roses were all red and the ivy was all black. Dear, at a turn of your head my despair flooded back. The sky is too blue, too tender, the sea too green, the air too soft. I always fear – it must be remembered some atrocious act of yours. I’m tired of holly with varnished leaves and shivering boxwood too, and the countryside’s infinity and everything, except you!

Circumspection
(Jadis Et Naguère)

Give me your hand, still your breath, let’s rest under this great tree where the breeze dies beneath grey branches, in broken sighs, that the soft, tender moonlight caresses. Motionless, and lowering our eyes, not thinking, dreaming. Let love that tires have its moment, and happiness that expires, our hair brushed by the owl as it flies. Let’s forget to hope. Discreet, content, so the soul of each of us stays intent on this calm, this quiet death of the sun. We rest, silent, in a peaceful nocturne: it’s wrong to disturb his sleep, this one, Nature, the god, fierce and taciturn.

Streets
(Romances Sans Paroles)

Let’s dance a jig!
I loved above all her pretty eyes
brighter than the stars in the skies,
I loved her malicious eyes likewise.

Let’s dance a jig!
She for sure, she knew the art of breaking a poor lover’s heart,
how charmingly she played the part.

Let’s dance a jig!
But I find that it’s even better
that kiss of her mouth in flower
now, in my heart, she’s a dead letter.

Let’s dance a jig!
I recall, oh I recall the hours,
the words we let fall,
and this is the very best of all.

Let’s dance a jig!

Naguere Prologue
Glimm’ring twilight things are these, Visions of the end of night. Truth, thou lightest them, I wis, Only with a distant light, Whitening through the hated shade In such grudging dim degrees, One must doubt if they be made By the moon among the trees, Or if these uncertain ghosts Shall take body bye and bye, And uniting with the hosts Tented by the azure sky, Framed by Nature’s setting meet,— Offer up in one accord From the heart’s ecstatic heat, Incense to the living Lord!
- Translated by Gertrude Hall

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