Poetic-Verses from ATHANASE
Three sighs
What could I say to you that would make it any clearer than this ?
The weather's mild, the avenue of plum trees is beautiful –
let's relax, rest our backs against their silky bark.
*
That woman with the ivory fan is untying her hair as petals rain down.
First she sings. Than she stops singing.
What's she singing about ? And what do her luxurious silences mean ?
*
The bumblebees make vague music,
and above them I can hear the elegiac song of other bees –
my house is full of laughing friends who love me.
Translated from the French by Norton Hodges
The weather's mild, the avenue of plum trees is beautiful –
let's relax, rest our backs against their silky bark.
*
That woman with the ivory fan is untying her hair as petals rain down.
First she sings. Than she stops singing.
What's she singing about ? And what do her luxurious silences mean ?
*
The bumblebees make vague music,
and above them I can hear the elegiac song of other bees –
my house is full of laughing friends who love me.
Translated from the French by Norton Hodges
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Three sighs
Three sighs
