Special Bonus Poetry Post

It's a rainy night here in Paris. Let's hear what our resident poet, sad-sack* Paul Verlaine, has to add to the mix:

Il Pleure dans mon Coeur by Paul Verlaine

Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville.
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénêtre mon coeur ?

O bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits !
Pour un coeur qui s’ennuie,
O le chant de la pluie !

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce coeur qui s’écoeure.
Quoi ! nulle trahison ?
Ce deuil est sans raison.

C’est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi,
Sans amour et sans haine,
Mon coeur a tant de peine.

It Rains in My Heart (English translation)

It rains in my heart
As it rains on the town,
What languor so dark
That it soaks to my heart?

Oh sweet sound of the rain
On the earth and the roofs!
For the dull heart again,
Oh the song of the rain!

It rains for no reason
In this heart that lacks heart.
What? And no treason?
It’s grief without reason.

By far the worst pain,
Without hatred, or love,
Yet no way to explain
Why my heart feels such pain!


Thanks for that, Paul!

*: He really does appear to have been a miserable poor sod; of course his doomed affair with Rimbaud didn't help matters much.


I think we need a nice cat poem to counterbalance Paul's depressed and depressing omphaloskepsis (= "nombrilisme", en français)

Once a certain cat and cock,
Friendship founded on a rock,
Lived together in a house
In the land of Fledermaus.
Each loved music in his way,
And the cock, at break of day
Chanted: Cock-a-doodle-do!
Kiki-riki--Kuk-ru-koo!"
While his cat friend, in the middle
Of the night, would play the fiddle.
Sometimes they would play together
--Handsome fur and fancy feather--
And the pair would dance and sing
While the house with joy would ring.

from Vikram Seth's "The Cat and the Cock"