De Maupassant tranlations versified by stephen richard eng with an essay on de Maupassant

8/6/2019 De Maupassant tranlations versified by stephen richard eng with an essay on de Maupassant

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Introduction

Guy de Maupassant? Wasnt he the French story-writer, author of The Necklace, that we read in high

school? And The Piece of String? Stories with a trick ending, a kind of French O. Henry, and didnt hechose women all the time dying of syphilis?

Yes, if we remember him at all. That he wrote about 300 short tales and four novels we may forget; and no

one but a scholar would remember he wrote any poetry. For he was famous for short stories, and if the age

of good short fiction isnt over, the age of good brief prose may be. Could any living writer match this

man who wrote well, and tersely, so many tales? Not impressions, confessions, or descriptions, but tales of

events in real peoples lives. With no words wasted, no moralizing, nor social message. No wonder critics

prefer lesser authors to write studies of. He leaves them with nothing to say.

And his life was as simple as his prose; no wonder biographers bypass him too: he was too normal,

exuberant, unconfused, life-loving, to be very interesting. As a simple intellectual youth, he worked all day

in a government office, and wrote stories and loved women at nights, and on weekends rowed boats and

shot pistols. During this time he spent seven years apprenticeship; each Sunday letting novelist, Flaubert,

tear into his latest tale. He then was able to quit his job and sell enough fiction to buy a yacht and live

handsomely, dying at 43, insane form tertiary syphilis.

He was not a devotee of deviant sex, drugs, black magic, suicide, revolutionary politics, reckless spending,

or any of the usual vices of the unusual authors in a time famed for posturing and decadence. He was out-going, happy, and disinterested in critics, intellectuals, and self-analysis.

Two of his greatest disciples are two of the greatest story tellers. The first, O. Henry, initiated only one of

his frequent tricks, the surprise ending. The second, W. Somerset Maugham, copied his form and brevity,

but seldom his passion and finesse.

But can a prose master write verse that is more than doggerel? This is not an age to answer this fairly. For

rhyme and meter are not fashionable, nor is clarity. Perhaps this is why de Maupassants verse has lainuntranslated in a century that is fond of the morbidity of Rimbaud, the decadence of Verlaine while

preferring Eliot and Pound, even to them.

Perhaps de Maupassant writing of seasons, love and lust, birds and fantasy, is too personal, too sure, too

terse for our age. We hope not. We the like patterns and wit, the charm and the brevity. Not to study, or

analyze, but to read and feel. To feel the nostalgia for boyhood Normandy, the gaiety of Montparnasse, the

excitement and heartache of a brief aborted love, and the adventure of the boulevard.

Come if you will, fall in step with de Maupassant, down the avenue at evening, where well-dressed ladies

smile and rouged faces are lit with gas-light and laughter, if not with sincere love.

The English speaking world knows his tales but not till now, does it know his verse. We only put it into

English because we wanted to read it that way: no one else had ever done it for us. Enjoy!


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De Maupassants Romantic Beginnings

Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was the leading French short-story writer of his day, he and Poe

becoming the chief influences on the well-made short story such as W. Somerset Maugham popularizedin the Twentieth Century. De Maupassant is remembered for cruel cynicism, and a mocking irony and cold

pity that was called realistic in his day. (Though he was too sure a craftsman to need to wallow in the

muck of earthy Naturalism.)

But he began as a verse writer, and like most young versifiers was unabashedly Romantic. These

verses probably gave him emotional release from the tight, taut story writingfor he was undergoing at

this time a rigid apprenticeship under Gustav Flaubert. For seven years he labored, publishing nothing inprose till Ball Of Fat mad him an instant successand he plunged into fulltime fiction writing, and

virtually left his verse behind him. It was early collected (Des Verse, 1880), dismissed by his subsequent

biographers and criticonly half of his verse finding its way into English.

Hardly great poems, they still have much of the craftsmanship so apparent in his fiction, though

sometimes their meter wobblesthe themes are mostly Romantic, sometimes fantastic, often baring the

sentimental self-pity that Flauberts weekly criticism cut out of de Maupassants fiction. But de

Maupassants own correspondence betrays a self-doubting, adolescent, excitable young man, so it is easy

to see that these verses are his. You can sense that the Romance of his verse hardened into the cruelRealism of his fiction. The tone of the verse mostly contrasts with the brutal smugness, or icy compassion,

of the prose, as well as with the self-assured image of Frances leading story-teller, who lived passionatelyfor literature, and for sensual love. (The latter killed him, with a slow death of tertiary syphilis at forty-

three, increasingly insane in his final months.)

These verse trifles have been recast without perfect fidelity to de Maupassants scansion; oftentimes he

was prolix, redundant, and metrically uneven. These are as much paraphrases as literal translations, though

faithful in content and mood: but the goal has been to craft tolerable English verses from the material at

hand, rather than to produce even weaker Frenchified English verbatim verses. De Maupassant, ever the

professional himself, would likely approve at least our good intention, if not the result.

[And thanks to Richard Wiltshire of Portland, Oregon for expert help with the literal French meaning.]1978


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The Wall(Le Mur, 1880)

Sunstroke(Un Coup de Soleil)

Terror(Terreur)..

Snowy Night(Nuit de Neige)...

Messenger of Love(Envoi DAmour).

The Wild Geese(Les Oies Sauvages)..

The Ancestor(LAieul)

Discovery(Decouverte)....

The Bird Catcher(LOiseleur)

Desire(Desirs)...

The Last Escapade(La Derniere Escapade, 1876)

The Moonbeam(La Chanson De Rayon de Lune)

A Walk at Sixteen Years of Age(Promenade A Seize Ans, 1876)...

The End of Love(Fin DAmour)

A Rustic Venus(Venus Rustique)..

Child Why Are You Crying(Enfant, Pourquoi Pleurer? 1880).

Hope and Doubt(LEsperance et le Doute, 1871).

The Windmill(Le Moulin)

The Mandarins Sleep(Le Sommeil du Mandarin, 1872)

Sabbat-Revel(Sabbat)..

Sonnet(Sonnet).

Memories(Souvenirs)

Final Evening(Derniere Soiree, 1868).

Life..


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The Wall

Fireplace flames have scattered light

Out the window, down the night,

Till the tunes of evening callTo musicians in the hall.

And then through the window swellsPerfumed leaves and grassy smells

Mixing with the scent of skin

Powdered pleasingly as sin,

Like the mad aroma of

Decadent sweet stars above.

Heavy-lidded ladies stare

As the curtains fill with air,

Billowing out white and pale

Like a galleons great sail,

On a starry sea of night

Beaconed by loves harbor light,

And as perfumed music played,

Overhead arose and weighedHeavy on the burning sky,

Red, red moon that blazed on by.

Then outside on moon-red sand

Couples wandered hand-in-hand.

Gentlemen enflamed with love

From the bleeding moon above.

Yet the ladies lowered eyes

Shyly from the lust lit skies.

Bathed with breezes breathing low.Now their shoulders felt the flow,

Soft, seductive and intense,

Secret sin that stirred each sense.

Soon I heard a playful sound

Tempting me to turn around,

Eager for the sweet surprise

Of my ladys laughing eyes.Lets go back my dress is new

But as we kept on walking through

Avenues of tempting dark,

Couples filled the passioned park,

And when we encounter one,

Some man cursed, and rose to run!

Then we heard a nightingaleAnswered by a far-off quail,

As we let our bodies fallDown before a shining wall

Bathed in moonlight, mocking me

With denied, dear ecstasy

Of the treasured pleasures there,

Under unfurling hair

And her tempting dress, I

Waited hungrily to try.


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Dry, dry mouth, my body cold,

Trembling, clumsy, not so bold

As I needed to be then,

I recovered my courage when

Her laughter crazed me mad,I was fumbling, blushing shy,

Till the moon smiled from the sky.Suddenly I found I had

Eased her down upon the ground.

Then without a single sound

Blazed that sweet seductive moon,

Knowing what would happen soon.

She resisted my attack,

Pushing my firm body back,

Till our writhing shadows grew

On the moon-flushed wall like two

Puppets pulled from up above,

Marionettes the moon of love

Jerked, and joked with, in a play.

Then the nightingale could sayTo the moon what we had done:

Turned two shadows into one.3-3-76


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Sunstroke

In the joy of a sun-showered JuneI was drifting inside a hot crowd

That was carefree and drunkenly loud,In the furnace of mid-afternoon.

And the sun wakened up my desire

Such as Adam first felt for his Eve,

The unquenchable, hell-heated fire

That shook Eden, and then made them both leave.

For a woman walked by then, and staredAt my soul as my senses each flared

And my body in flames wanted fuel

From her arms burning me sweet and cruel.

So I lusted to press her to me

In the scalding hot ecstasy of

A delirious, dazed fantasy

In a coma of sun-stricken love.

I believed I was holding her tightBodies locked both as one in a flight

Off the earth, to some smoldering starHot as sunlight we left down below

Near the earth, now so tiny and far

But then suddenly I came to know

That my dream lady I clutched had fled,

And our sun-maddened, red love was dead.

7-6-76

*


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Terror

On a night when I slumped in my chairI sensed suddenly something was there

As I shuddered with panicking fear

At the presence of something unknown,

And unnamable, soon to appear.

I sat trembling, so taut and alone,

As I felt someone lurking behind,

Soon to laugh at me, cruel and sick.

But the silence roared loud in my mind,While I feared he would touch my hair quick,

Or my shoulder, and clutch it so tight,And Id die from it, heart stopped from fright.

And he seemed even closer to me:

Was it real, or a fools fantasy?

Like some storm-beaten birds from the sky,

My words shivered, unable to fly,

All immobile like my legs and arms,

Both now frozen with icy alarms,

Till my teeth echoed, rattling like bones,

Of the dead, restless under their stones.

Then a creaksplintered silence in two,

And I shrieked in stark horror, and fell

Over faint with the force of my yell,

Dumb, unknowing if my fears were true.

06-26-76

*


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Snowy Night

The snow fields ring with frosty echoes of

The singing silence of the winter chill.

Until you hear a howl that floats above

The icea dog complaining to the winds that kill.

All other sounds and songs are quieted,All flowers faded, folded, crushed by cold,

And naked trees stand up like bones, so dead,

Like spectral skeletons, malign and bold.

The sad-eyed moon now hurries past us, pale

And frozen down a grim, grey soundless sky;

And underneath small creatures start to fail

And falter till they freeze and softy die.

The moon beams down its icy yellow lightUpon the sea below of eerie, snow-locked land;

The paling gold of moon melts on the white,

And glimmers like a gem on some cold hand.

The tiny tortured birds hang barely to

Their branches, wishing they were in the nest,

Afraid they wont last one more bleak night through,

Their feet like ice, the death-cold in each breast.

The birds await the night so they can sleep,

Betrayed by moon-gleam on the shimmered snow,Their night has passed; it looked like day! They keep

Expecting night, deceived by moon and snowy glow!

07-08-76

*


9/30

Messenger of Love

Your mother is someone I live for and love,

So come, little child, and sit down next to me,

And tell me, did pale golden stars up above

Paint your hair the halo of yellow I see?Your curls are fringing your forehead with light

The colors of planets that melt with the greenOf your eyes, reminding me, through gaze serene

You will speak of my love, to your mother tonight.

Caress her with kisses of innocent fire,

Your hair and your lips gently carrying my desire,

And when she sees your love has gained something new

Shell tremble and wonder and murmur a few

Soft words in an answer to loves gentle kiss,

Whose love are you bringing to me? Is it his?08-25-78

*


10/30

The Wild Geese

The tame birds are silent tonight,

And under the grey sky, alls white,

Except for the crows soon to dive

On them, and stain silver snow red.

But hear all the noise up ahead:A flock of geese soon to arrive!

An arrow of birds splits the air

In two, as they hurtle past there

And hammer their wings on the sky.

The bird who guides them over trees

And deserts, hot sands, and cold seas

Is making sure with his fierce cryHis birds fly much faster away.

Like ribbons that ripple alive,And loud, as they dip and they dive:

A triangle wedge made of grey.

But under them, down on the plain,

Their tame brothers, come what now may,Press forward, so frozen with pain,

Like heavy-weighed ships that but sway

Below the shrill cries overhead.

They look up above at each row

Of birds till the last one has fled,

Then they sadly rise up now to go,

To try all in vain still to fly,Aware that theyre grounded to stay

No matter how often they tryEscaping to freedom today.

They fail and but fail as before.

So over the snow fields they wail,

And cry as their brother-birds sail

Away for a distant warm shore.

5-30-71

*


11/30

The Ancestor

The ancient man was laying cold,

Dying on the white, white sheets;

His face was ninety long years old,

His heart was pumping its last beats,When suddenly his voice began

Reciting seasons of the man:The decades that had drifted past,

The pleasures that escaped too fast,

The agonies that seemed to last.

Is this a dream, or memory?

I see mornings full of sun,

Fermenting sap inside the tree,

Forgotten youth forever done.Is this a dream, or memory

Of times that nevermore can be?

I remember, I recallThe summer fading into fall,

I remember, I recall.


Breezes scattering my hair,Desire that rises wild in me,

With every throbbing gust of air.

Is this a dream, or memory

Of April wind to set me free?

I remember, I recall,

Those April yearsI see them all,



Listen to the noise insideMy chestits pounding like the sea,

My thoughts are drowning in the tide.


I walk a beach in far Eternity,

I remember, I recall

I hear my forebears ghosts that call!



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05-26-78

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Discovery

I.

My favorite boyhood books portrayed Crusades,

Those glorious struggles for the Holy Tomb,

When Christian bravery and bladesCondemned the Moslems to a gory doom.

King Richard, Lion-Hearted, severed necks

Of enemies to deftly make

A victors necklace, dripping crimson specks

From heathen heads, cut off for Jesus sake.

And so I fancied I was some bold king,

And for a sword took stick in handAnd made my wooden weapon slash and sing,

To scatter heads of flowers on the land.

For I was lord of trees and open air,

And scorned the castled kings Id never seen.

To raise a throne, I made a mossy chair,

And wore a crown of fronds, of April green.

II.

I reigned resplendent in my kingdom till

Someone as young as me, walked in on me.

She made my feelings overflow and spill

I offered her my forest court, for free.

She sat below the chestnut tree and stared

Her gaze made me surrender everything,

My royal gems and boyhood stripped and baredHer presence could have mastered any king.

So why did I forsake my castles, for a blue-

Eyed golden-colored girl upon the ground?

I felt the way Columbus did, to view

Those first enchanted islands that he found.

07-06-76


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*

The Bird Catcher

The bird catcher Love has a name

I think everybody has heard:

A name that is earning him fame,

His cage overflowing with game;

He traps and imprisons each bird.

By morning he stretches his threadUntil a long piece is unwound:

Its here that the birds will be fed

With seeds, and small pieces of bread

And glue, in the traps on the ground.

He crouches where birds never see,

Behind the stone wall and the hedge,

Or back of a rock or a tree,Wherever a bird ought to be:

Up mountains, or by the seas edge.

The finches drop down from the air

Where lilies-of-the-valley conceal

Whatever hes covered up there:

A wicker or willow-wand snare,

That birds never spot, only feel.

The myrtle is violet-blue,

The hawthorn is flowery-white,

And both of them shelter from view

The traps where the little birds flew:

The bird catcher Love stops their flight.

5-22-78

*


14/30

Desire

Some men wish for giant wings,

Taking them aloft with piercing cries,

To seize a swallow while she sings,

Vanishing down dark, dimmed skies.

And others wish for strength, of course:Muscles, arms to crush someone,

Brute brawn enough to grab a horse

By the nose, upon the run.

But my desire is different, yet:

Give me some gods perfect face,

A body no one can forget,

Looks that time cannot erase.

Id like to pluck from Loves sweet vine

Different ladies, everyday:Brunettes or red-heads, each be mine,

Take one taste, then toss away.

Id love warm glances in the street,

Lust that eyes alone can light,The furtive smile, the hurried feet

Kisses torn from one in flight.

Id wake up kissing dark, dark hair,

Strangled in soft arms, for Love,

Them later kiss the blondest fair

Forehead, with the moon above.

Id never taste one fruit too long,

Biting once or twice, no more:To linger longer is somehow wrong;

Love gets bitter, toward the core.

5-5-78

*


15/30

The Last Escapade

The ivy-clad castle is cracked at its base,

The foundation is crumbled with Time,

Theres grass on its floor and theres moss on its face,And therere towers nobody will climb.

Then two ancient people appear at the gate,

Theyre all bent and decrepit with years:

A man and a woman discarded by Fate,

Until Death, round the corner appears.

But out on the meadow the sun is aflame,

And the butterflies mirrored the light,

And both of the people, stooped, withered and lame,Begin edging out toward the worm sight.

They drink in the sun and their eyes feel its fire,And like children they go hand-in-hand,

With canes, and old bodies that threaten to tire,

Theyre exploring the fragrant green land.

And there in their path is the moss-coated stoneOf the bench where they sat long ago,

The feel in their flesh and inside of each bone

The return of that far-away glow.

A bird in the distance exults with its song;

And it echoes down far-away years,

Arousing old love in their heats before long,

Till their kisses bring rapturous tears.

But joy turned to anguish for years that are dead,As they feel what the decades have done,

Their hearts burn as chill as a lump of grey lead,

As theyre ending what theyve just begun.

The woman succumbs from the strain of their joy,

And the knowledge her body is weak,

Collapsed in his arms like a broken-down toy,


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With no energy even to speak.

He jumps up to run off and find her some aid,

But he stumbles and clumsily falls

Face down on the grass on the floor of the glade,And the wind of the evening calls.

The shadows descend and theyre shrouding the two

Silent motionless shapes on the ground

The slugs and the insects are only a few

Of the creatures who pass with no sound.

The rain showers down on those shapes on the grassStill alive, as they tremble with cold,

But after the storm and the night comes to pass,

They are still: all their storys been told.

04-79

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18/30

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A WalkAt Sixteen Years of Age

The earth was smiling at the clear blue sky,

Morning dew was kissing grass once dry,

My soul and all the world tried hard to sing,

Then a blackbird making light of everything

Was whistling from a bushsweet melody,

Still I didnt care if he made fun of me.

For I was watching someone very beautiful appear,

Picking flowers by herself, so near.

I climbed the slope and sat down by her feet,

Looking up where hillside and horizon meet

She said Behold the yellow slope, the deep ravine,

Mountainside, and there, the grassy green.

But I saw nothing but her faery face,

Thrilling as her voice filled up the space.We walked home through the woods and then we found

Timber fallen, slanted to the ground,

A barricade I raised out of her way;

Smiling, she passed under, face alive and gay,

But silent as we left the woods once more;

We sat down close upon the meadowed floor,

Our hearts spoke louder than our words could have,

Talking voicelessly of Something stirringthere.1978

*


19/30

The End of Love

The sun awakened fields of perfumed dewThat glistened on the flowers and the grass,

Where insects and bright butterflies would pass,

While up above the sky streaked rose on blue.

And larks were singing and the rabbits played,

And happy stallions whinnied, one-to-one,Then two sad lovers walked below the sun,

Oppressed with all of Loves mistakes theyd made.

They settled on a slope and there she said

No longer do you love me. He replied

Is that my fault that love fell ill and died?

This only flushed her pretty face bright red.

She cried: Your touch still fires my body with delight

And yet you draw back from my hand, so cold,As if our passion of last year was old

Remember when our mouths once pressed so tight?

But he just rolled an idle cigarette,

And lit it with an air of dry disdain,

And spoke:Our love is languishing in pain,

A futile fantasy were wise to forget.

And as they walked, the tears rose in their eyes,

Until she finally fell down on the ground,

And wrapped her empty, loveless arms aroundA tree, and filled the meadow air with cries.

He stamped his boot and snapped at her:

Enough! Its over, and it cant return,

No matter how you whimper, pine, or yearn,You cant bring back the people we once were.

Disgusted by her girlish, gushing words,

He shrugged a last goodbye and went,

And left her sobbing in sad sentiment,

While overhead chirped love-filled birds.

The blackbirds whistled and the nightingaleWas trilling, and the sparrows sang;

The music of the birds: a soulful pang!If men were birds, then love might last, not fail.

The pealing music of the feathered choir rang!

(She sighed, If we were birds, our love might yet prevail.)

4-22-79

*


20/30

A Rustic Venus

I.

How many gods and goddesses remainLike those of ancient Greece or Italy?

How many Venuses are there who reign,

Tempting, titillating every likely man they see?

A fisherman discovered on a strip of sand

A tiny child abandoned by the oceans rim;He lifted her into his basket with his hand,

Saving and protecting her: he took her home with him.

Now everyone delighted in this rescued girl,

Till soon, the baby whom they hugged began to grow:

The sunlight freckled her and bleached each golden curl,

Burnishing her honey-ambered skin to make it glow.

II.

The girl became a woman in a well-filled dress.And lusty farmhands each desired to have her first,

While she but tantalized them with coquettishness,

She, the sweet oasis to their parching, quenchless thirst.

She even once inspired a vicious, public fight:

Two brawny brutes, each battling for a chance with her,

As she sat flattered by their furious, foolish sight,

Fickle, all indifferent as to whom she did prefer.

III.

And so she tantalized the men from miles around,Bestowing favors wantonly amongst them all,

In darkened rooms or out up on the grassy ground,

Anywhere she let her clothes and defenses fall.

And when she passed proud stallions they were not aloof,They whinnied as she smiled and neared their fence,

And birds would greet her from the highest tree or roof:

Free and natural, she could catch each creatures confidence.

At evening she would sometimes seek the sand and sea,

Her blonde and naked body glinting with the moon,

And after swimming would recline in ecstasy,

Leaving an impression of her form beside the dune.

IVOf all the men nearby, she only hated one:

An ancient, ugly shepherd in his fetid hut,

A fugitive from decency and morning sun:

Monster of the night, with gnawing lusts he craved to glut.

Yet pliant virgins gave themselves to sate his love,

While fearing what his eerie prophecies foretold,


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As he spoke chilling prayers to pagan gods above;

Wizened, wizard, voicing loathsome rituals ages-old.

V

Of course our goddess of a girl refused his fierce desire,And for long months she fled him in the bracken wood,

Until at last her womans will began to tire.Only then did she succumb the way she knew she would.

Outside, the snow and snarling wind whipped naked trees;

Inside his hut, she stiffened at his goat-like smell,

Diminishing his cravings, causing them to freeze.

Maddened, now he pummeled blows upon her! Then she fell.

The shepherds faithful dogs emitted mournful moans,

Attacking him until the sound that rent the air

Was wind, a-rustling eaves and trees, like bones,

Stifling all her sobbing, all her terminal despair.

VI

The dawn streaked purpling red across the melting grey,As something scarlet faced the shimmered, snow-white gleam:

The gored and spattered shepherd braved the dazzling day,Stumbling dumbly forth amidst refulgent suns red beam.

And our demented shepherd strode back toward the town,

Confessing boldly what hed done, so all could hear,

Till villagers began to follow him back down,

Down that sanguine trail whose evidence shone crimson clear.

VIIThe townsmen felt some understanding for this act,

An unsurprising fate for one so carefree-wild,

A cruel, inexorable, predestined final factDooming her whom theyd adored since when she was a child.

They grasped one brutal law: an ugly god cannot

Forgive a goddess, so generous with her love.

Instead, inevitable destruction formed her lot,Penalty for reckless lust those townsmen well knew of.

VIII

And so they lifted up her reddened, golden shape,

Transporting her along the town-ward, red-specked trail.

And loitering about the scene of her red rape,

Frenzied, dazed, the shepherd bellowed one long anguished wail.

IX

His faithful watch-dogs all deserted him to runBeside the funeral cortege now begun

Beneath the gilded, gore-red sun.

7-6-76

*


22/30

Child, Why Are You Crying?

Little child, theres no reason to cry,

Push the thorns on your pathway apart,

Find the flowers wherever they lie,

Interweave them each in wreathes from your heart.

And how long has it been since youve smiled?

Walk a flower-filled path all alone,

Sing your worries away, little child,

Never cry, never sorrow or moan.

Let the songs of the birds fill your ear,

Let your smile, like a sun-ray appear;Since the morning, great God turns His ear

To the tunes of the birdsand of you.09-05-75

*


23/30

Hope and Doubt

Columbus looked across the blue,

Imagining a world all new,

Lands nobody thought could beBeyond the charted, traveled sea.

The sea-lanes mariners had tried

Ocean avenues well-known and wide

He left, for unknown earth so far

His only compass was a star,

His fate decreed by winds and waves

Where other sailors found damp graves.

Sometimes hed halt with weariness

From sailing empty ocean space,And let the winds and waters press

His ship off course to some new place.

Just like Columbus, others yearn

For distant shorelines, hard to reach,

Where perfumed breezes waft the beach,

And languid lovers touchand learn.

On such a beach, beyond all grief,

Two lovers walk beneath the beam

Of some sweet star that lights their dream,And glistens on the wave-wet reef.

But when a hurricane arrives

The lovers shudder at the sound,

Until it passesthen is foundThe sound of Hope in two young lives.

10-08-1978

*


24/30

The Windmill

I saw before me

In the mists of the moonlight, a silhouette tall

On the hill like a monster, gaunt arms clutching wide:

A huge windmill whose blades only rise up to fall,Carving arcs in the shadows upon the hills side.

Thus I saw in the haze, like a dream up ahead,

An immensity looming, that shook me with dread,

With a forehead that scraped on the star-sprinkled skies,

An old mill that continued to thrust up and rise,

With its sails a-spinning, circling galaxies of

All those stars ringed in haloes of light far above,

Stealing gold-dust from robes of the comets so farThat old Time himself seemed a prisoner of Space,

Yet the windmill on earth still revolved in its place,Going down, then back up, circling each distant star.

08-12-76 (rev. 12-10-90)

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25/30

The Mandarins Sleep

All the moonbeams are mother-of-pearl on the plain,

Painting silver on porcelain towers below,

Where three ladies who gossip are all that remain

With the moonbeams that shimmer and flicker and flow.

On rich rugs made of silk, in the gathering grey,

Lies the mandarin Von-Thong, now shutting his eyes

To lantern light casting its flowering ray,

As the wind in the distance scatters suffering sighs.

All alone on the ceiling the lantern flame throws

A bright colored bouquet of fierce fluttering gleams.Like a purple plumed bird swooping down on a rose,

Or some glimmering thought in the mandarins dreams.9-27-76

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26/30

Sabbat-Revel

I.

Over plains and hills

The night-time swells and chillsHark! A yelping yowl

Hear the werewolf howl.

Sorcerers beneath

The moonlight on the heath

Circle, circle, spin

Now the rites begin.

Ghosts and gnomes arrive

Demons once aliveStrip the gallows bare,

Seize whats hanging there.

Feed each hungry fiend:

Bring the guillotined

Heads that crows have picked

Dead that worms have licked.

II.

Suddenly the dawnIs sprinkling light on lawn,

Causing all to flee

Mornings brilliancy.

No more blood to slurp;As insects chatter, chirp

Roosters crow and clack!

Pink skies blot the black.

02-17-1975

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27/30

Sonnet

Your sky is shadowed with a tomb-dark cloud

That dims our futures falling, faint far star,

And all your pain wraps us in cold thick shroud,

Till who you were is choked by who you are.The flame of love that flickered golden-red

Is grey-black ashes in your frozen soul,

As you wish you could sleep, forever, dead

And dreamless, like the love Time saw and stole.

But yet, however bleak the fireless sky,

A shaft of God-light bursts and burns up high,

And glows on you amid the grimmest grey.

And if you find the death for which you pray,Youll damp and darken everybodys day:

So many friends, will weep their grief away.06-20-76

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28/30

Memories

Swallows all rise to the sky,

Far from their home-trees they fly,

Coming back, when winters die,Every spring

To the nests where they first spread each wing.

Man like the birds, flies away,

Wanderer, winter and May,

Haunted by his yesterday

In this town

Where his ancestors ghosts still look down.

Later, when years follow fast,Suddenly he feels the past

Beckoning him home at last

To the sound

Of the church bells above grave-ground.

08-01-76

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29/30


30/30

Life

As a ship plows a wake in the sea,

Or a bird wings a shadow of air,

Life arrivesthen is instantly gone!

Like a drowning man crying, Help me,Like a mist that is no longer there,

Evanescentlylife passes on.

1978

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Documents

De Maupassant tranlations versified by stephen richard eng with an essay on de Maupassant