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The rosy-green flight
Of hills and ramps
Blurred in twilight
By a soft lamp

Golden valleys darken
Red in the breeze
Small birds harken
In headless trees

The sadness fades
In my mind’s medium
These autumn shades  
Shatter the sky’s tedium
Translation of Bruxelles – Simples Fresques I by the French poet Paul Verlaine.
Dark bat, would I were curious as thou art-
Like a tea-tray twinkling at night,
And lying with eternal wings apart
Til morning when you end your flight,
And spend the day at your raven-like desk
Chanting incantations old and obscure
With lyrics obscene and Kafkaesque
Quoting first Foucault, then Sassure -
No-yet still puzzling, still remarkable
A black beacon amid shades of grey -
Elusive, and in pursuit quite snark-able.
To you I am drawn as a ****** to ****
I’ll be your muse and you’ll be my death.
A sonnet I wrote for an eccentric guy with a Lewis Carroll/general literature fixation. It's the only sonnet that I have a record of writing and I'm quite happy with it even though it doesn't completely scan.
My child, my lover,
Come away to discover
Continents far and new!
To love and to sigh,
To dream and to die
In a land as exotic as you!
Humid suns wink
Behind cloudy skies
So alluring and charming
So strangely alarming
With crocodile lids blink
Like the tears in your eyes.

There, all is order, beauty and leisure
Luxury, calm, quiet and pleasure.

Wood panels beaming
Polished and gleaming
Would decorate our room;
The rarest of flowers
In the height of their bloom
We’d while away the hours
Inhaling amber in our lungs,
Walls with deep mirrors hung
Our souls would feast,
On the wonders of the East
Whispering a sweet native tongue.

There, all is order, beauty and leisure
Luxury, calm, quiet and pleasure.

The aqueducts have, nestled,
In a drowsy slumber
With vagabond vessels
Lined unencumbered
Their sails unfurled
They come from the ends of the world.
- The twilight sky clouded
Leaving pastures shrouded,
The canals, the entire town,
Glows amber and blue;
The night falls down
In a soft, warm hue.

There, all is order, beauty and leisure
Luxury, calm, quiet and pleasure.
A practice translation I did for my degree. I've tried my best to be true to the sense of the poem and the ideals of Symbolism, rather than making it either a direct translation or perfectly rhymed.
Call yourself a friend of mine,
Forcing me to “neck” beer and wine?
Lovingly mixed with ***** and gin,
And dash of ketchup added in,
Wasabi for that extra kick -
The whole thing just makes me sick!
It’s not fun or cool or clever,
But a study in peer pressure,
Present in the world we live in,
Where for a guy or girl to “give in”,
Is expected for their reputation.
But what kind of expectation,
Is encouraged sado-masochism?
A concept likely to cause a schism,
For those who didn’t use their head,
And unsurprisingly now are dead.
I am sure as you will surely see,
And the poet Dylan would agree,
That as long as you ignore
The deaths of one, two three and four
How many, many, many more,
Are needed til we scream and cry?
“We caused too many youths to die!”
And for what cause? Acceptance.
Whose loss is needed for our repentance?
It’s all well acting free and wild,
But each of us is someone’s child -
Whose loss would surely cause sadness,
Hurt and pain and grief and madness?
And stomaching death is much harder
Than soap or dirt or grease or lard or
Whatever miscellaneous things
This activity inevitably brings.
Just saying “no” might make you quiver
But trust me; it’s better for your liver -
And living x years sans hurt or maim
Is worth > than 15 minutes of fame.
So do the maths before you do it -
Or else I bet you’ll likely rue it!

— The End —