Today, a poem. Those of you who are purely Anglophone can skip to the translation below, by A. S. Kline. It’s not perfect, but it’s far better than anything I could manage on the spur of the moment, and it rhymes, and it will give you an idea of the very lovely and sad and Halloweeny original.
(One thing in the last couplet: “avoines folles” are “wild oats,” which I am sure you know by sight at least, and which I have given you in the above image. They are a far more atmospheric background for our two ghosts than “wild herbs,” but Kline used “herbs” to rhyme with “words,” and I understand and sympathize and am glad I can read French, and that’s why translation is a crazy bitch.)
*
Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé
Deux formes ont tout à l'heure passé.
Leurs yeux sont morts et leurs lèvres sont molles,
Et l'on entend à peine leurs paroles.
Dans le vieux parc solitaire et glacé
Deux spectres ont évoqué le passé.
--Te souvient-il de notre extase ancienne ?
--Pourquoi voulez-vous donc qu'il m'en souvienne ?
--Ton coeur bat-il toujours à mon seul nom ?
Toujours vois tu mon âme en rêve? --Non.
--Ah! les beaux jours de bonheur indicible
Où nous joignions nos bouches! --C'est possible.
Qu'il était bleu, le ciel, et grand l'espoir !
--L'espoir a fui, vaincu, vers le ciel noir.
Tels ils marchaient dans les avoines folles,
Et la nuit seule entendit leurs paroles.
*
In the lonely old park’s frozen glass
Two dark shadows lately passed.
Their lips were slack, eyes were blurred,
The words they spoke scarcely heard.
In the lonely old park’s frozen glass
Two spectral forms invoked the past.
‘Do you recall our former ecstasies?’
‘Why would you have me rake up memories?’
‘Does your heart still beat at my name alone?’
‘Is it always my soul you see in dream?’ – ‘Ah, no’.
‘Oh the lovely days of unspeakable mystery,
When our mouths met!’ – ‘Ah yes, maybe.’
‘How blue it was, the sky, how high our hopes!’
‘Hope fled, conquered, along the dark slopes.’
So they walked there, among the wild herbs,
And the night alone listened to their words.
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