The Munich Mannequins by Sylvia Plath
Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children. Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb Where the yew trees blow like hydras, The tree of life and the tree of life Unloosing their moons, month after month, to no purpose. The blood flood is the flood of love, The absolute sacrifice. It means: no more […]
Above The Oxbow by Sylvia Plath
Here in this valley of discrete academies We have not mountains, but mounts, truncated hillocks To the Adirondacks, to northern Monadnock, Themselves mere rocky hillocks to an Everest. Still, they’re out best mustering of height: by Comparison with the sunnken silver-grizzled Back of the Connecticut, the river-level Flats of Hadley farms, they’re lofty enough Elevations […]
What time are we living in by T. Wignesan
What time are we living in It’s not if but since the future can be told To a broadly verifiable degree What time are we living in: present old Future or has it all gone past already Don’t tell it for honours to politicos They hanker after two-bit history lines Don’t even […]
Villanelle: Oscar Victorius by T. Wignesan
Lock not the door in the face of your fate The intruder lies dimly in your place Will he die for you were he your true mate Soft the dark wind taps in every haste late Makes your darling come lie by your fire-place Lock not the door in the face of your fate Harsh […]
To Don Quixote, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s A Don Quichotte by T. Wignesan.
To Don Quixote, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s A Don Quichotte by T. Wignesan. To Don Quixote, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet : A Don Quichotte (Poem written in March 1861 that I would Verlaine had dedicated to the Grand Dear Old Man of Letters : Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra – with kind permission, of course, […]
To a woman, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: A une femme by T. Wignesan.
To a woman, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: A une femme by T. Wignesan. To a woman, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet : A une femme (In this traslation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet : « A une femme », I have retained the rhyme scheme to the letter, I hope. T. Wignesan) To you these […]
To a person, they say, frigid, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: A celle que l’on fit froide by T. Wignesan
To a person, they say, frigid, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: A celle que l’on fit froide by T. Wignesan To the person, they call, frigid, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : A celle que l’on dit froide (Poem written on September 5, 1889 at Aix-les-Bains, which I found a bit jarring with abrupt exclamations […]
The Virgin Maid of Orleans, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: La Pucelle by T. Wignesan.
The Virgin Maid of Orleans, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: La Pucelle by T. Wignesan. The Virgin Maid of Orleans, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s La Pucelle To Robert Caze* Even as the blaze crackled around the stake’s pyre, Joan was deafened by the clergy’s brutal chanting, Harsh eyes with hate from all the windows demeaning, […]
The Evening Soup, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: La Soupe du soir by T. Wignesan
The Evening Soup, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: La Soupe du soir by T. Wignesan The Evening Soup, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s La soupe du soir To J.-K. Huysmans (Verlaine here paints a stark tableau of working-class or peasant life shorn of any symbolic or imaginary references. Even if I see no reason to keep […]
Prison Souvenirs, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: Prière by T. Wignesan.
Prison Souvenirs, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: Prière by T. Wignesan. Prison Souvenirs, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : Souvenirs de prison, March 1874* (Verlaine was sentenced to serve a term of two years in prison for having shot his erstwhile lover in the arm/hand, the legendary poet Arthur Rimbaud, ten years his junior, on […]
Prayer, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: Prière by T. Wignesan.
Prayer, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: Prière by T. Wignesan. Prayer, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : Prière (One of Paul Verlaine’s later poems, after having gone through early success as a poet, love, family life, and yet another kind of relationship with Rimbaud, crime, prison, drunkenness, unrequited love, divorce, and intense inner turmoil. T. […]
Post coitum omne animal triste est sive gallus et mulier by T. Wignesan.
Yes, no cockerel who rules the cackling roost Will stomach slander from Latin master; But who will stand aside and let the ghost Of hints slur old motherhood’s register. Manhood must of needs hang its head in pain After all the sweat and toil in loins of love; After millions of squiggly soldiers in vain […]
Petrarchan Sonnet: If no one else breathed in this wide, wide world by T. Wignesan
If no one else breathed in this wide, wide world Will one know one exists under this sun Or how will he guess he’s the only one If none thought of him in some other world Will he then climb upon some hill all bold To announce: Where is there another son Not just the […]
Paris, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: Paris by T. Wignesan.
Paris, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem: Paris by T. Wignesan. Paris, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s poem : Paris ( For those who may be interested, this poem by Paul Verlaine presents more difficulties than his other rhymed quatrains I have read, but then this may only be a personal feeling. T. Wignesan) Paris cannot lay […]
Nevermore, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: Nevermore by T. Wignesan
Nevermore, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s sonnet: Nevermore by T. Wignesan 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 […]
Criss-Cross Acrostic*: Ai My Eye ! by T. Wignesan
I Was Saw Eye Eye Saw Was I Eye Was Saw I I Saw Was Eye *Construe as “words” not as “letters”: Lines 1 and 3 read alike reversed; Lines 2 and 4 read alike reversed; likewise vertically and diagonally from up-down or down-up mode. © T. Wignesan – Paris, 2013 Poetry In Englishwww.poetry.monster
Copla Suelta: The One and the Same Dream by T. Wignesan
If you must dream the dream I dream Then the dream comes true when you wake But who dreams first Yet if you wake before the dream Has had time to gestate and make The dream will burst Is there only one dream out there The kind we watch ponder record And hang up high […]
Ballade: In favour of those called Decadents and Symbolists, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s Ballade: En faveur des dénommés Déca by T Wignesan
Ballade: In favour of those called Decadents and Symbolists, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s Ballade: En faveur des dénommés Déca by T Wignesan Ballade : In favour of those called Decadents and Symbolists, Translation of Paul Verlaine’s Ballade en faveur des dénommés Décadents et Symbolistes for Léon Vanier* (The texts I use for my translations are […]
Am I the Assassin or the Undertaker by T. Wignesan
For Palani I He stopped coming our way again He was no where in sight at school Then, after a long absence In the pit of the Chan Ah Tong padang He came and stood at one corner of the field He looked resigned grave A stoic smile hovering over his lips Over his virgin […]
Portrait of a Lady by T. S. Eliot
Thou hast committed— Fornication: but that was in another country, And besides, the wench is dead. The Jew of Malta. I AMONG the smoke and fog of a December afternoon You have the scene arrange itself—as it will seem to do— With “I have saved this afternoon for you”; And four wax candles in the […]
Tim Turpin by Thomas Hood
Tim Turpin by Thomas Hood Tim Turpin he was gravel-blind, And ne’er had seen the skies : For Nature, when his head was made, Forgot to dot his eyes. So, like a Christmas pedagogue, Poor Tim was forced to do – Look out for pupils; for he had A vacancy for two. There’s some have […]
Jerusalem Delivered – Book 02 – part 07 by Torquato Tasso
LXXXVI “But if our sins us of his help deprive, Of his high justice let no mercy fall; Yet should our deaths us some contentment give, To die, where Christ received his burial, So might we die, not envying them that live; So would we die, not unrevenged all: Nor Turks, nor Christians, if we […]
Mi ha el by Vinko Kalinić
Do not worry, I haven’t forgoten you even though we haven’t heard from each other for centuries. At some hollow time of the night, I’m still poetry writing because of you. And during the day, drinking often from that same invisible fountain, which makes me behave totaly childish. It happens at some blind time, when […]
Mi ha el by Vinko Kalinić
Do not worry, I haven’t forgoten you even though we haven’t heard from each other for centuries. At some hollow time of the night, I’m still poetry writing because of you. And during the day, drinking often from that same invisible fountain, which makes me behave totaly childish. It happens at some blind time, when […]
Aeneid by Virgil
ARMS, and the man I sing, who, forc’d by fate, And haughty Juno’s unrelenting hate, Expell’d and exil’d, left the Trojan shore. Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore, And in the doubtful war, before he won The Latian realm, and built the destin’d town; His banish’d gods restor’d to rites divine, And […]
Voltaire At Ferney by W H Auden
Almost happy now, he looked at his estate. An exile making watches glanced up as he passed, And went on working; where a hospital was rising fast A joiner touched his cap; an agent came to tell Some of the trees he’d planted were progressing well. The white alps glittered. It was summer. He was […]
In Memory of W. B. Yeats by W. H. Auden
I He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted, And snow disfigured the public statues; The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day. What instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dark cold day. Far from his illness The wolves ran on […]
Consider This And In Our Time by W H Auden
As the hawk sees it or the helmeted airman: The clouds rift suddenly – look there At cigarette-end smouldering on a border At the first garden party of the year. Pass on, admire the view of the massif Through plate-glass windows of the Sport hotel; Join there the insufficient units Dangerous, easy, in furs, in […]
Salut au Monde. by Walt Whitman
1 O TAKE my hand, Walt Whitman! Such gliding wonders! such sights and sounds! Such join’d unended links, each hook’d to the next! Each answering all—each sharing the earth with all. What widens within you, Walt Whitman? What waves and soils exuding? What climes? what persons and lands are here? Who are the infants? some […]
Respondez! by Walt Whitman
RESPONDEZ! Respondez! (The war is completed—the price is paid—the title is settled beyond recall;) Let every one answer! let those who sleep be waked! let none evade! Must we still go on with our affectations and sneaking? Let me bring this to a close—I pronounce openly for a new distribution of roles; Let that which […]
Poem of Joys. by Walt Whitman
1 O TO make the most jubilant poem! Even to set off these, and merge with these, the carols of Death. O full of music! full of manhood, womanhood, infancy! Full of common employments! full of grain and trees. O for the voices of animals! O for the swiftness and balance of fishes! O for […]
France, the 18th year of These States. by Walt Whitman
1 A GREAT year and place; A harsh, discordant, natal scream out-sounding, to touch the mother’s heart closer than any yet. I walk’d the shores of my Eastern Sea, Heard over the waves the little voice, Saw the divine infant, where she woke, mournfully wailing, amid the roar of cannon, curses, shouts, crash of falling […]
Crossing Brooklyn Ferry. by Walt Whitman
1 FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face; Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face. Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me! On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are […]
Off the Ground by Walter de la Mare
Off the Ground by Walter de la Mare Three jolly Farmers Once bet a pound Each dance the others would Off the ground. Out of their coats They slipped right soon, And neat and nicesome Put each his shoon. One–Two–Three! And away they go, Not too fast, And not too slow; Out from the elm-tree’s […]
The Bell From Europe by Weldon Kees
The Bell From Europe by Weldon Kees The tower bell in the Tenth Street Church Rang out nostalgia for the refugee Who knew the source of bells by sound. We liked it, but in ignorance. One meets authorities on bells infrequently. Europe alone made bells with such a tone, Herr Mannheim said. The bell Struck […]
from Venus and Adonis by William Shakespeare
But, lo! from forth a copse that neighbours by, A breeding jennet, lusty, young, and proud, Adonis’ trampling courser doth espy, And forth she rushes, snorts and neighs aloud; The strong-neck’d steed, being tied unto a tree, Breaketh his rein, and to her straight goes he. Imperiously he leaps, he neighs, he bounds, And now […]
A Man Young And Old: X. His Wildness by William Butler Yeats
O bid me mount and sail up there Amid the cloudy wrack, For peg and Meg and Paris’ love That had so straight a back, Are gone away, and some that stay Have changed their silk for sack. Were I but there and none to hear I’d have a peacock cry, For that is natural […]
Lullaby by William Butler Yeats
Beloved, may your sleep be sound That have found it where you fed. What were all the world’s alarms To mighty paris when he found Sleep upon a golden bed That first dawn in Helen’s arms? Sleep, beloved, such a sleep As did that wild Tristram know When, the potion’s work being done, Roe could […]
The Pilgrim by William Butler Yeats
I fasted for some forty days on bread and buttermilk, For passing round the bottle with girls in rags or silk, In country shawl or Paris cloak, had put my wits astray, And what’s the good of women, for all that they can say Is fol de rol de rolly O. Round Lough Derg’s holy […]
A Tale of Christmas Eve by William Topaz McGonagall
A Tale of Christmas Eve by William Topaz McGonagall ‘Twas Christmastide in Germany, And in the year of 1850, And in the city of Berlin, which is most beautiful to the eye; A poor boy was heard calling out to passers-by. “Who’ll buy my pretty figures,” loudly he did cry, Plaster of Paris figures, but […]