Poetic-Verses from ATHANASE
The Fragrant Voice (English)
'Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight?'
Marlowe
She was singing. Was it at the window
or at the door's blazing threshold?
As if the house, that forest of stifled energies,
nights of muffled murmurings,
bushes where grew a thousand secret little wounds
had just opened in its trembling breast
a narrow passage like a forced col,
leading to the truth of the still untouched dawn!
Waves from her soul poured from her throat:
Dawn, throw powdered amethyst on my words,
draw the favours of Venus to my lips!'
her young voice sang, like an elusive thread,
a mysterious ocean,
a new waterfall of desire!
Was she trying to fix the essence
of the day that began
in her words?
As for me, furtive, I edged closer
to the source of this sprightly melody
hesitant, and as if astonished
by the fragrant voices
which filled my own voice
with a vast sweetness, unimagined
in this our precocious spring!
O confused snatches of a life
for ever now unclear,
immortal scents
of a distant childhood
which, perhaps, was never more than
a dazzling incisive dream !
translated from the French of Athanase Vantchev de Thracy by Norton Hodges
26.04.06.
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The Fragrant Voice (English)
The Fragrant Voice (English)
