"spleen" poems
May we live in and see interesting times, the old saying goes
another offers that when the mind is blind, the eyes cannot see
for me my days are interesting and the laughter readily and often comes
for the grapes of wrath brings forth mirth filled grapes on grapevine tendrils
As lemmings and sheep enact bellyaching absurdities, as the ridiculous does
Veracity on sojourn and falsehood in residence with doors firmly closed
Hamlet re-enacts hapless role, with Red Robin Hood and vigilantes to a tee
eager audiences, participatory scenes in towns and cities, leaving empty homes
come all and vent your spleen and satiate your prejudices without paying a fee
This land belongs to us, it is our birthright and we will send Hamlet to the catacombs
Nothing is private anymore, rights and freedom nailed, anywhere we roam
Ophelia not only went to Italy, she went to Hull, Turnpike Lane and even Essex
but a joke here, if all these were good, why did she come to me, you simple gnomes
perchance unlike you common goons, she knows distinction has no comparison to thee
Your vacuous hate filled mind cannot see that difference in a Prince, that regally looms
Act two, dim, fooled actors in their Beggars Opera, screaming, 'we oppose' with glee
so called republicans, laughable in their ardent favor, ignorant of their lobotomy botches
we will do Hamlet's head in, totally unaware theirs been done in, for the brains of fleas
in a civilisation, our conscious and stable populace, roots for vigilante and mob rule, yeah
for a man of distinction is a threat reminding you of your insignificance and lack of tomes
Come friends, lets see how the home of Democracy, hounds a citizen for us all and we
lets know that Robin Hood is alive and taxing, and 'Windrush' is still active in dispatches
indigenous people power, meets criminal gang stalking, meets racism and we all drink tea
and in true cowardly fashion, its all done by insidious, indictable, nefarious, malcontents and psychopathic crazies
It is our proud duty that we should all ruin Hamlet, for mediocrity has no distinction for aspiration et excellence
Copyright LaurenceA. JUNE 2018.All rights reserved.
Jul 25, 2018
Jul 25, 2018 at 8:00 PM UTC
*Wont rupture one’s
Spleen
But it’ll preen
One’s sense of keen.*
Mar 13, 2015
Mar 13, 2015 at 4:14 AM UTC
Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
Bumming your fat knobs and insert your helmet naked and unashamed
Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
Kicking off kick-off, cyborgs brought face to face
Tartan sunstroke and may Mumbo Jumbo's **** all lie among you
Nine, eleven, seven, thirteen, six, quinquereme, ******** ********* Tweedledum and Tweedledee, unsocial person, erectoffensive!
This is Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
You've really ****** the naval officer
And the hatchet faces want to know whose blouses you abuse
Now it's time to evacuate the ******* if you have a free hand
This is Lance Corporal Tom to Masticated Ectoplasm
I'm fancy dress dancing through the cat—flap
And I'm groping inside a swollen grotesque sailor
And the plums look gigantically unusual nowadays
Ergo from Land's End to John o' Groats am I piddling in a crumpet slammer
Telescopic hindward the lump
Uranus Arsenic is scatological
And there's sweet **** all I can have ****** *********** with
With the proviso that I'm Ichabod celibate centipede sextillion heads
I'm fondling vigorously paparazzo
And I think my sputnik knows which direction to ****
Tell my ballbreaker I ****** her vigorously for England, she bonks
Masticated Ectoplasm to Lance Corporal Tom
Your menstrual cycle's kaput, there's oojakapivvygizmo spleen
Can you smell me, Lance Corporal Tom?
Can you get to the bottom of me, Lance Corporal Tom?
Can you delve into me, Lance Corporal Tom?
Can you...
From Land's End to John o' Groats am I vibrating ring my crumpet criminal lunatic asylum
Telescopic hindward the groupie
Uranus Arsenic is scatological
And there's sweet **** all I can have ****** *********** with
Mar 27, 2010
Mar 27, 2010 at 4:22 PM UTC
Flamingos aren't naturally pink
But not for the reason most think
They preen and they dye
And they leave it to dry
Before rinsing it off in the sink
The magpies send me into fits
The ducks have me losing my wits
The crows are a blight
And they crow all night
But I do enjoy watching the ****
Vanessa McRafferty-Fryer
Set alight to the **** of her squire
She took a few shots
Of his privatest spots
And then laughed as he ****** out the fire
A penguin called Panama Pete
Had no love of the snow on his feet
So he stayed for a spell
At the polar hotel
With a pool and Jacuzzi en suite
I met a quite curious swan
By a lake I was boating upon
It tickled my ***
And insulted my mum
With a flurry of wings, it was gone
I know of a Gerald McFitz
Who arouses himself when he sits
For his favorite chair
Is the shape of a pair
Of voluptuous wobbly ****
and one for that special someone...
Your pancreas really is grand
Tis a thoroughly marvelous gland
You've a cute little spleen
Though it's seldom seen
And a nose growing out of your hand **
Jun 23, 2013
Jun 23, 2013 at 12:31 PM UTC
When, in disgrace that I myself despise
And all alone do I lament my fate
I think upon my sweet love’s steel blue eyes
And doing so my troubles dissipate
In my philosophy I do declare
That in all heaven and all earth
There is no one so wond’rous fair
I have not a whit of her worth
In wallowing in thoughts of pity springs
My perfect songbird from solemnity
As the dove from the ocean brings
Green sprigs of hope from land to sea
To the ideal you lift me from my spleen
I am, forever, your earnest faerie queene
May 31, 2016
May 31, 2016 at 2:19 PM UTC
Thugs with Pens & Aerosol Cans
Thugs with Pens
Hell-bent; not on cultism
Just airing the other sentiments
That don’t make it to primetime
Thugs with pens
Not poking out eyes
Just venting spleen
Sick of the lies
Thugs with pens
Deserve to be heard
They don’t poison your brain
With stacks of *****
Thugs with pens
And aerosol cans
Can change your mind
In ******* time
Thugs with pens
Can make a dent
They don’t need to insert
Un-readable, un-interesting
Covert small print....
Thugs with pens
Don’t need no script writers
Or advisors nor signatories
Witnesses, nor dodgy men
With gold plated fountain pen nibs
To make amends
Or throw in no hidden clauses
That secretly **** your life blood
Thugs with pens
Don’t aim to pierce your skin
But make their mark
Deeper within
Thugs with pens
And aerosol cans
Completely uncensored
champions of free speech
The establishment want suppressed,
silenced, deleted; terminated.
Thugs with pens
And aerosol cans don’t
Schedule meetings
To fix the minutes
And schedule another meeting
And keep ‘minutes’
As square angled
And unproductive
As formal conversation
Thugs with pens
Aim venomous ink
At headless politicians
That squawks like chickens
Bending over
For the *************
Bank-beefing corporations,
Controlling the masses
With ***** little catchphrases
And mounds of munitions
And illegally enforced restrictions
On your movement and free expression
Honest men
Have nothing to fear
From Thugs with Pens & Aerosol Cans
These “thugs” seek asylum
From countries
Where the law’s
Not bought and bent
Thugs with pens & aerosol cans
Are made to wear monikers and masks
Thugs with pens
Don’t turn on its own
Neighbours and citizens
To perpetuate myths:
A ****** ************* lie…
A thing that never happened!
(That’s for all of you dumb wits
out there
Who believe most of the ****
That’s drip fed
Your sensation addicted minds
Most of the time,)
Time you started reading between the lines
In fact get a pen
Or an aerosol can
Write your own lines
Start broadcasting
Reclaim your space
Before you’re completely neoned
Into the shade
And corralled under the spell
Of a TV screen
Or an anger raising headline
That conducts the flow
Of the status quo
Load up your magazines
With ball point pens
And sharp edged writing nibs,
Strap on a belt of aerosol cans
Reclaim your right to free expression
In public spaces
Join the rag-tag army
Of intuitive
Self-knowing men
The End: is well begun,
George Orwell
Should never have written
That blueprint,
‘1984’
Mar 25, 2013
Mar 25, 2013 at 8:59 AM UTC
I lurk on social media.
I post all day and night.
It strokes and stokes my ego
to pick a verbal fight.
When I see inspiring stories
or such videos I watch,
my cruel and vicious comments
will take them down a notch.
Oh feel my power and my wrath,
my insults, mean and shocking,
like "Loser", "Snowflake", ****** ***
(do you tremble at my mocking?)
I hate the world, I loathe myself,
my friends all went away.
Girls say I'm scary and a creep.
My rage grows every day.
My impotence consumes me,
I respond with posts of rage.
Anonymous through GMail
and my fake Facebook page.
My hatred grows as my soul shrinks
and so my spleen I vent.
Safe, deep within my bunker,
down in my mom's basement.
Apr 22, 2020
Apr 22, 2020 at 9:23 AM UTC
People smile when they are happy.
That much is true, and to see
Yours, brings me such joy.
Then why is my smile a decoy?
I swear my happiness is genuine
But all I feel is a spleen
As deep and passionate
As the love I hold, love that I hate.
Pink, white, beige, red
Those lips of yours make me drop dead
Black, brown, blue, green
But those thoughts are, when they should have been.
Today I learned that love is a rose
Beautiful, but still harmful
And now I know that I should close
My heart, before my wounds become lethal.
Mar 21, 2018
Mar 21, 2018 at 11:23 AM UTC
Is it a mystical force
Within me
That shuts the streetlight down
As I pass beneath?
That quiets the crickets
As I stride by
At this ridiculous time of day?
Such silly girlhood notions
To imagine I posses that kind of power
And I thought those childhood fantasies
Were evacuated
Must be hiding away from the darkness
Behind my spleen
Undectable to me.
Aug 27, 2013
Aug 27, 2013 at 7:24 AM UTC
if I stay.
decisions to take, make up my mind. again.
end of this story from my point of view.
dying is easy, living is hard. guess I have to live like that?
scream, desire to **** emotions to not feel.
If I stay, my mind is on replay.
remembering everything before my swollen eyes
with broken limb, collapsed lung, ruptured spleen
life I lived, people I hugged, music I played
lips I kiss, brother I start to miss
parents I was rise.
Enduring agony is too painful.
don't give up! why he doesn't stop to talk?
love never dies, it never goes away.
I don't want to hear what he has to say.
please Adam, go away.
sick body, with broken heart, wondering:
where it will be the place for love?
I don't want to wake up in a world where I don't belong.
If I stay has a lot to say
certain ideas and themes about life itself,
beautiful family life, life near a best friend,
life with a boyfriend and not at least
life with joy and music.
later he will ask himself
where she went?
and all I will say:
I choose to live this way,
far away from my former life. which ended in that day.
Mar 16, 2014
Mar 16, 2014 at 7:07 AM UTC
Here God,
Everything is for you:
Here are my
Testicles, looking like smashed purple grapes,
Bruised, mashed, and crushed along with what
Is left of my once proud, now exploded, tattered *****
I have laid before you my
Disemboweled, bloodied and tangled intestines;
Blown into bits and pieces, here lays my torso along with
Shattered ribs, ruptured lungs, exposed internal organs:
Erupted heart; battered, split, spleen; torn, mangled liver;
Next to them, my legs, minus a few toes;
Arms with hands missing thumbs, fingers;
My head,
Less pieces of skull, cheek bones, nose, tongue, and teeth,
Is nearby;
Those puffy messes of glutinous, jellied, deflated ****** orbs are my eyes;
Over here, piles of chunks of obliterated pieces of flesh floating
On a thick soup of congealed blood, mixed and meshed with
Splintered, fractured, cracked bones; everything
Convoluted, disfigured, impossible to identify.
All of this is for you,
I am your martyr,
Your soldier,
Your obedient servant;
I blew myself up,
Along with many infidels including
Men and women,
Unborn babies and children,
Young boys and girls,
I tore their bodies to shreds,
Mangled and mutilated, they
Suffered deaths no nightmare could imagine.
I sacrificed myself for you,
Exemplifying piety and righteousness,
I await my reward,
Wait for you to put my pieces together again;
Been here for what seems an eternity and
You have not come near;
Not made me whole.
Where are you?
Are you not great?
Where are the young, innocent, ****** girls or
The boys with silky, pearl smooth skins;
Will I ever have an ******** again?
Uncomfortable, anxious, concerned I
Lay here on this sacred, hallowed ground,
Like a fleshy puzzle, scattered in jagged pieces,
Waiting to be solved;
Praying to be completed and recomposed.
Where are you God?
A virtuous, faithful, prostrated one waits;
I have much to show you.
Oct 21, 2010
Oct 21, 2010 at 7:50 AM UTC
When I was 15, I wouldn’t have believed you
if you told me all of this about constant lament
in a Red painted Animal House of scapegoats
that I’ve yet to see
it’s
streets of beige
it’s
fast food bad food no food spilled milk or beer
it’s
the South no the East maybe West probably North
it’s
in the air the water the meat there’s just too much heat to breathe or hold a job
it’s
hourly wages and daily commutes of gypsy peddlers in a town I’ve never been to
it’s
the cigarettes or nicotine my useless spleen filtering things I should never inhale or drink
it’s
divorce rates leading to ***** flicks c-sections finding acquaintances on monitors after dark only able to generate laughter over years of tears
it’s
women
it’s
pain
it’s
the migraines we get when we're waiting on the rain to paint the beige streets bronze
it’s
rolling trees metal trucks frozen lakes lumber jacks and ice fishing
it's
the anxiety of right wrong bad good all grey in the sunshine without you
it’s
the words of times you said meaning more to me than it ever could to you
it’s
the colossus of Wall St. overbearing my own suit and tie un-ironed or cared for but necessary none the less
it’s
CCTV the fight for power Government foreign travelers or terrorists Project Paper clip MK Ultra Plum Island persuasion propaganda Paul Wolfowitz
it’s
who governs what you can afford when you sit tattered on a curb after earning another mans bread
it’s
what has or has not been said 7 times or none that still lingers on the grass out front of home or house
it’s
no matter how big you are you still answer a toy phone handed to you by a two year old
it’s
the tears of Alexander when he realized there were no more worlds to conquer
Oct 29, 2012
Oct 29, 2012 at 2:37 PM UTC
Alice and I were fudged fruiting inside Falstaffian freakish fleur–de–lys:
She inside a quack–aztec–tattooed tank,
Me inside a pendulous magenta harness with polydactyl–perverted plumes bespattered into it.
In the ****** **** of that kaput flophouse
We creosoted our conks all the cockatrices of the gorge–de–pigeon,
Inside crotches, Jacuzzis and homocentric Action Men.
Alice, with the pornographic bend sinisters in the teeth of her poltergeistish fajita crocodile,
Smacked of the plug–ugly poofter of a south–south–west by south sackful sandbank.
I cemented the jaundiced dangler of an ostrich to my prick.
With that and my uncut fiddlestick of knobs
I was the idiosyncratic and wholehogging sadomasochistic slapper!
We banged the bush streaming proboscis in tentacle
Through smorgasbords of hermaphrodites and high muck–a–mucks
While Ravi Shankar’s idioglossias and cockchafers juddered our titbits.
Our Moonies were classically cracked flabelliform by the time we disinterred them.
Alice managed to fornicate incognito white elephant on behalf of myself
And we were passionately on the back of the dingdong, naked as our Moonies.
We kept one’s pecker up wrapped up in the shadowgraph
Athwart ever-strangling girdles of formaldehyde, ozone, fomenter and widow’s weeds,
Athwart polytetrafluoroethylene–pricked precipices and then down to the butts
Where we both came to a sticky end on our jockstraps and leered at the ballet dancers
That we then penetrated rhythmically by elongating tumescent our gang banging tentacles.
Through comfortable French knickers I burped, “Thank you for ****** me everywhere, Alice”.
In the soporific honeypotspunk, aped on the ooze,
I could smell that her **** had made her ******* type soap flakes break the sound barrier,
Splashing out a ***** whale seed skirting her jowls.
“You’re fragrant, flypaper”, she rapped.
The Government gabble that little green men who hammer out the sexagenarians weren’t on board.
Inside spleen of the spliffs, inside spleen of my gangrenous Pollyanna, I will over one’s dead body evacuate.
I will over one’s dead body evacuate.
Mar 22, 2010
Mar 22, 2010 at 4:09 PM UTC
I.
A louse in a house
or a mouse on a blouse.
A bell that goes ****
or a gong that goes ****
A gap on a map
or a cap on your lap.
A drink in the sink
or an ink that stinks.
A spleen on a screen
or a queen who is green.
A bow in the snow
or a crow that glows.
II.
A wash or a whip,
a lip or a lop,
a top or a tip,
a car or afar,
a bar or a war,
a door or a snore,
a bore or a nail,
a flail or a whale,
a run or a bun,
a sun or a moon,
a spoon or a bus,
a fuss or a sigh,
a cry or a cheer,
a fear or a smile,
a while or a pen,
a den or a cat,
a mat or a hat,
a bat or a glass,
a vase or a weight,
a mate or a fork,
a cork or a mop,
a cop or a stop.
III.
Apples and artichokes, ants and antelopes,
bees and beers, books and brains,
cucumbers and chimneys, ***** and coats,
dogs and drains, dots and dominoes,
ears and eejits, elephants and exams,
flies and flutes, files and friends,
grasses and guts, giants and gyms,
horrors and hiccups, horses and hills,
igloos and irons, irises and idiots,
jumpers and jackets, jodhpurs and jellies,
kings and kettles, kites and kittens,
lions and lamps, lemons and lunches,
mums and monsters, mosses and moths,
noses and notes, nightmares and needles,
oblongs and orang-utans, organs and oranges,
paintings and pennies, ponds and pants,
quiches and quizzes, questions and queues,
rainbows and rings, rascals and rabbits,
snakes and sprouts, sweets and salts,
trumpets and trains, tables and toasters,
umpires and ukuleles, umbrellas and uniforms,
violets and vests, violins and vials,
wheels and wings, windows and weeds,
xylems and x-rays, xylophones and xysters,
yachts and yoghurts, yards and yaks,
zigzags and zephyrs, ziggurats and zombies.
Oct 29, 2013
Oct 29, 2013 at 5:03 PM UTC
The cruciferous prophet sticks in my teeth-
I think I'd rather have a tidbit, of thief;
All covered, of course, in a vinegar sauce
With just a light dusting, of the true cross.
Some rarefied spleen, set sideboard,
With red vintage wine; A.D. thirty-four
Frankincense and Myrrh, baked in aspic;
And saved for last, Shroud Flambe: digestif.
Mar 8, 2010
Mar 8, 2010 at 6:17 AM UTC
Trembling in my bed tonight
I cannot close my eyes
The movie on the late, late show
Says everybody dies
Now some say I'm a scaredy cat
But tonight is Halloween
What if someone kidnaps me,
And tries to eat my spleen?
I know there's no great pumpkin
Okay, maybe there is
What if he puts a spell on me,
And tries to make me his?
And I think that there's a monster
Who lives beneath my bed
I shiver and shake and stay awake
With covers over my head
There's something outside my window
And shadows on my wall
I think I hear some rattling chains
From the ghosts that's in the hall
Right then I hear this eerie voice
And feel this clammy hand
My wife says, "Hush and go to sleep,
You're supposed to be a man"
Oct 27, 2010
Oct 27, 2010 at 7:46 PM UTC
I would scorch the end of the cork
and score bags under my eyes
if the black of my tired spleen
was not already weighing
Like the luggage of the ******
packed in haste, always in haste
so that essentials are oft forgot
like health, or peace, or dignity
As it is, the cork stays unburnt,
but out of the bottle
as a gentle **** the lot of you.”
Oct 8, 2021
Oct 8, 2021 at 12:20 PM UTC
I know you cannot have it all in life
I know there will always be a void unfulfilled
But I want to follow the voice inside
I am constantly feeling this way
Constantly feeling the void
I have an insatiable desire to reach perfection
Perfection in my reflection
Has it make my flaws magnified?
Forcing me only to focus on my distortions
And not seeing my abilities
I want to listen to my heart
For it is my truest self
It is telling me something my mind cannot hear
I want to see my name on the bookshelf
Engraved with ice and fire for it will never disappear
I want to write, draw, color
Use my hand as my tool
Speak the words of my mind and my soul
Touch and bring the spirits to my whirlpool
I want something bigger than me
Although I am not small
My mind is wider than me
It is full with words and ideas coming and going at a rapid pace
Craving more and more of wisdom knowledge and inspiration
You know what my mind is telling me right now
Peace
From within and around
Lift
My spirit from aboveground
Rest
My body through meditation and prayers
These days I feel like I am living outside my body
Spying myself from afar fearing to be seen
Hiding behind the trees into the wildest parody
Watching myself while feeling a little spleen
I want everything to stop just so I can process
The world is running at a rhythm i cannot follow
I want to create a big-bang easy to digest
I want my work to resonate in the darkest shadow
And then the earth can spin again at her own pace
I'm allowing myself to enter into this new discovery
Bringing my heart and mind to recovery
Let them go to the places I dared not stay
Speak the words I ignored to say
Tell the truth of my quest
Give it to the world as my bequest
And then put myself at rest
"And when I'm done no matter where I've been
I'll yearn to do it all again" - from The Eternal Lament by 2Pac
Nov 2, 2016
Nov 2, 2016 at 2:00 PM UTC
I see my life flashing before me
Red siren, blue siren
This fathomless landscape bores me
Red siren, blue siren
These ****** destroy me
Red siren blue siren
My God I implore thee
Red siren, blue siren
To save my life.
They pump me full
Thump thump
Thump thump
They always have.
So full of drugs and lies
That corrode in the past.
They pump me full,
Right from the vein
They drain my blood,
With their disdain
They chain me down,
Right to the bed
They shock my heart,
Inject my head
Bump bump
Bump bump
This ride from hell,
Their eyes so wild
My wound does swell,
Does swell so large
Oh gangrene supreme
They shock my heart -
Cut out my spleen -
The room goes dark,
They shock my heart
Cut out my spleen. . .
Bump bump
Thump thump
Oh needle people,
Sticking me full.
Oh needle people,
Take me for a fool.
Red siren
Blue siren
I pray unto thee now
Red siren
Blue siren
I call out your name
Red siren
Blue siren
Because to these imbeciles
RED SIREN
BLUE SIREN
My life is just a game
RED SIREN
BLUE SIREN
I pray and I say!
RED SIREN
BLUE SIREN
Have mercy on me!
RED SIREN
BLUE SIREN
As these dogs,
They watch me bleed.
Jan 9, 2014
Jan 9, 2014 at 7:02 PM UTC
Argue, if you feel you must,
Of matters unresolved,
As shades of innuendo
Flavour differences devolved.
As points of view diverge
Despite the rational discourse,
And the heat behind the eyes
Injects invectiveness’s force.
When the fire in the belly
Raises tension to extreme
And the beads of perspiration
On the brow... engage the spleen.
Catch your breath for just a moment,
Smile into the tiger eyes,
Engage the low slung counter punch
With a sidestep that belies.
Your firm control is of the essence
A cool restraint... your mortal tool,
You can argue, if you feel you must,
But you’ll seem a shallow fool.
For your finesse will make the difference
In the playing of the hand...
To keep a nemesis at bay
With your level gaze... as planned.
Marshalg
Victoria Park Tunnel
5 January 2010
Jan 5, 2011
Jan 5, 2011 at 7:26 AM UTC
The sea stretches tight on a slight, white horizon
unflurried by waves, by the clean, boneache moon.
The water rests awhile, passing slowly through the ribs of continents,
its deep, deep chest booming with the cries of extinct fish.
I am not dead, though the salt has lifted me out
and away, its sting green-silver like a safety razor edge.
It rubs away chromosomes, the earliest layers of skin
and remakes me pale and raw as a baby’s spleen.
The land abandons me. The last little fishing vessel
returns to its village, bearing upon its sun-slick floor
the heft of my cells, my tiny stillborn children.
I know I’ll never be a mother;
the salinity of my blood has risen steadily
these past million years;
it itches against my arteries
and calcifies in the deeper pockets of my lungs.
I tower over grassroots, vivid as a corpuscle,
drinking from the local well and dreaming of lysis.
Jun 18, 2013
Jun 18, 2013 at 12:22 AM UTC
Spleen
by Paul Verlaine
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
The roses were so very red;
The ivy, impossibly black.
Dear, with a mere a turn of your head,
My despair’s flooded back!
The sky was too gentle, too blue;
The sea, far too windswept and green.
Yet I always imagined―or knew―
I’d again feel your spleen.
Now I'm tired of the glossy waxed holly,
Of the shimmering boxwood too,
Of the meadowland’s endless folly,
When all things, alas, lead to you!
Paul-Marie Verlaine (1844-1896) was a French poet and a prominent figure in the Symbolist and Decadent poetry movements. Verlaine has been called "one of the most purely lyrical of French poets." Keywords/Tags: Verlaine, French, translation, spleen, roses, ivy, despair, sky, sea, blue, green, red, black, holly, boxwood, Arthur Rimbaud
Ophélie (“Ophelia”), an Excerpt
by Arthur Rimbaud
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
On pitiless black waves unsinking stars abide
... while pale Ophelia, a lethargic lily, drifts by ...
Here, tangled in her veils, she floats on the tide ...
Far-off, in the woods, we hear the strident bugle’s cry.
For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
This albescent phantom, has rocked here, to and fro.
For a thousand years, or more, in her gentle folly,
Ophelia has rocked here when the night breezes blow.
For a thousand years, or more, sad Ophelia,
Has passed, an albescent phantom, down this long black river.
For a thousand years, or more, in her sweet madness
Ophelia has made this river shiver.
Mar 28, 2020
Mar 28, 2020 at 2:17 AM UTC