These are my modern English translations of sonnets by the French poet Stephane Mallarme.

The Tomb of Edgar Poe
by Stéphane Mallarmé
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Transformed into himself by Death, at last,
the Bard unsheathed his Art’s recondite blade
to duel with dullards, blind & undismayed,
who’d never heard his ardent Voice, aghast!

Like dark Medusan demons of the past
who’d failed to heed such high, angelic words,
men called him bendered, his ideas absurd,
discounting all the warlock’s spells he’d cast.

The wars of heaven and hell? Earth’s senseless grief?
Can sculptors carve from myths a bas-relief
to illuminate the sepulcher of Poe?

No, let us set in granite, here below,
a limit and a block on this disaster:
this Blasphemy, to not acknowledge a Master!

The original French poem appears after the translations

"Le Cygne" ("The Swan")
by Stéphane Mallarmé
this untitled poem is also called Mallarmé's "White Sonnet"
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

The virginal, the vivid, the vivacious day:
can its brilliance be broken by a wild wing-blow
delivered to this glacial lake
whose frozen ice-falls impede flight? No.

In past reflections on its thoughts today
the Swan remembers freedom, but can’t make
a song from its surroundings, only take
on the winter's ghostly hue of snow.

In the Swan's white agony its bared neck lies
within a guillotine its sense denies.
Slowly being frozen to its inner being,
the body ignores the phantom spirit fleeing...

Cold contempt for its captor
is of no use to the raptor.



Le tombeau d’Edgar Poe
by Stéphane Mallarmé

Tel qu’en Lui-même enfin l’éternité le change,
Le Poète suscite avec un glaive nu
Son siècle épouvanté de n’avoir pas connu
Que la mort triomphait dans cette voix étrange!
Eux, comme un vil sursaut d’hydre oyant jadis l’ange
Donner un sens plus pur aux mots de la tribu,
Proclamèrent très haut le sortilège bu
Dans le flot sans honneur de quelque noir mélange.
Du sol et de la nue hostiles, ô grief!
Si notre idée avec ne sculpte un bas-relief
Dont la tombe de Poe éblouissante s’orne
Calme bloc ici-bas chu d’un désastre obscur
Que ce granit du moins montre à jamais sa borne
Aux noirs vols du Blasphème épars dans le futur.



Le Cygne
by Stéphane Mallarmé

Le vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd'hui
Va-t-il nous déchirer avec un coup d'aile ivre
Ce lac dur oublié que hante sous le givre
Le transparent glacier des vols qui n'ont pas fui !
Un cygne d'autrefois se souvient que c'est lui
Magnifique mais qui sans espoir se délivre
Pour n'avoir pas chanté la région où vivre
Quand du stérile hiver a resplendi l'ennui.
Tout son col secouera cette blanche agonie
Par l'espace infligée à l'oiseau qui le nie,
Mais non l'horreur du sol où le plumage est pris.
Fantôme qu'à ce lieu son pur éclat assigne,
Il s'immobilise au songe froid de mépris
Que vêt parmi l'exil inutile le Cygne.

Stephane Mallarme was a major French poet and one of the leading French symbolist poets.

Keywords/Tags: Stephane Mallarme, France, French poet, symbolism, symbolist, symbolic, poetry, Edgar Allan Poe, grave, tomb, sepulcher, memorial, elegy, eulogy, epitaph, sonnet

far over a long stretch of dense wood
the earth casts downward to reveal a basin of still water
shaded slightly by the swaying leaves
and a crouched figure

into her reflection gaze, those near-crying eyes
wavering slightly as little mists catch evening light
odd shimmering shapes mists make:
like a lock of golden hair
and a tear, falling slowly downward
which just rests placidly on the water's surface
as to not disturb its holy silence

no matter how many tears she cried
no tear could ripple that still pool of glassy water
from which her reflection looked-- almost mockingly
if something can mock wholly unintentionally

some things have to stay unaffected
even if it's uncomfortable for a time.

There is a place, before the kings keep
Where those looks of solemn dignity
Go resignedly to weep
Between the gray trees and under gray canopy

To the place where wildflowers wilt and muses mutter
Little words, falling like white feathers in the muddy water

If one walks between the trees
There is a basin, and liquid of silvery green
Imbued with the mutterings of agony unseen

It is the words of those sorrows frail
Spoken with a breath and then a look of fright
And then a frantic run from faces clothed by night
Dissecting looks unrelenting judgments
upon the unredeemed

all who have felt the pain such as muses sing
And cried at night or betwixt the thorny leaves
have drunk of this basin green
And felt the hot swell of sorrow rising from the deep
crevices of our frail corporeal shells

And the voices of all those who filled it up
Violently swell in undulating liquid wail

From those who walk betwixt the trees
Is sounded the great collective scream.

Melodious moonlight thy clear liquid spreads
painting all in lavender hue
and moistening lips wait for the kiss of your words, muse
You sing through her parted lips your cryptic hymns and poetry,
words wound together in strange nightly meter
that twist together and shift like tree limbs tangled
and petals cast down the stream

To bathe in the rippling water
and wait for clarity to wash away the rough edges of the mind
let the stones become smooth
and mind like bowstrings, taughtened.

But the crowds protest in collective indignation
all members chained together by common trepidation
lest altars crack under the weight of strange words
and the diety's light grows dim
they sharpen what was dull and loose arrows in laughing mirth
into bodies' crooked minds uninhibited and feet unshackled

The ones in the crowd yell with groans and laughter
but they groan also with the pain of what is constant death and birth... they are resigned to their tradition's lies
and perish ten thousand times.
Nascent generations yell out in incredulity until voices become hoarse and skin turns gray, resign themselves to murmur their insolence in dreams as they whither slowly away.

But the one who, in nighttime, sings
and bestowed by muse's mind, from human lips part
words and strange poems spoken blaspheme
will live but once and one day rest
by the shifting branches and on grass by trickling stream
and not by chain's clanking arrest.

Sands and seashells as white as moonlit night
And water tugging slightly at the small boats
Trembling in the wake

“Far across the silvery sea”
Those little waves whisper to me
“From ocean dark and brooding blue, cross horizons bleeding red
is a land where the mists travel languidly through
and dangerous things betwixt the paths you tread.”

“There is a city that some say glows in the night
Whose towers ***** to glorious height
Domes and great structures stand below
Upon white stones, blue moonlight does glow.”

“If you swim out during the brooding storm
And torrential city make, with towers of black swirling wake
The sea will take and change your form
You will enter the depth and the depth will enter you
And sea imbued, you emerge anew.”

“On the second day, and the crest of red rising light
When Phoenix fly against the night
You will be ****** from water by the fiery wing
And to a new land take you as Phoenix songs it softly sings.”

“There you will encounter the dangers and things of strange delight
And the white walls of Elyse, whose light is cast upon the height.”

Eyes left wide, for
Now I've seen
The vanguard of my fevered dreams and

Jungle cats pace in my brain.
Paws alight, their
Claws aflame

And sinews
Incandescent white--
Seamless, green, their glowing eyes

Constellate where shadows heap.
Enough! My skull,
The marrow creaks...

What hells we weave
Through. Bitter dreams,
Awake, asleep or caught between.

I've caught this instant - firmly, by the
Tailfeathers. Plucked in darting flight and
Iridescent in the hollow of my hand, sheer
Primacy is utterly intoxicating me.

My fingers close on nothing more
Or less than what was there before,

But what is now was meant to be.
This heart will starve in reverie.

So to the next, whichever path
This river takes, what's past is past,

What's next is next... but now is mine--
My gift to me, all bound in twine

And velvet drape. The water's still.
Shall I leap? I think I will.