ryan wilson

My Bohemia

english translation

My Bohemia

original French poem

Ma bohème

Je m’en allais, les poings dans mes poches crevées ;
Mon paletot aussi devenait idéal ;
J’allais sous le ciel, Muse! Et j’étais ton féal ;
Oh! là là! que d’amours splendides j’ai rêvées !

Mon unique culotte avait un large trou.
—Petit Poucet rêveur, j’égrenais dans ma course
Des rimes. Mon auberge était à la Grande-Ourse.
—Mes étoiles au ciel avaient un doux frou-frou

Et je les écoutais, assis au bord des routes,
Ces bons soirs de septembre où je sentais des gouttes
De rosée à mon front, comme un vin de vigueur ;

Où, rimant au milieu des ombres fantastiques,
Comme des lyres, je tirais les élastiques
De mes souliers blessés, un pied près de mon cœur !

 

The Enemy

english translation

The Enemy

original French poem

L’Ennemi

Ma jeunesse ne fut qu’un ténébreux orage,
Traversé ça et là par de brillants soleils ;
Le tonnerre et la pluie ont fait un tel ravage,
Qu’il reste en mon jardin bien peu de fruits vermeils.

Voilà que j’ai touché l’automne des idées,
Et qu’il faut employer la pelle et les râteaux
Pour rassembler à neuf les terres inondées,
Où l’eau creuse des trous grands comme des tombeaux.

Et qui sait si les fleurs nouvelles que je rêve
Trouveront dans ce sol lavé comme une grève
Le mystique aliment qui ferait leur vigueur ?

—Ô douleur ! ô douleur ! Le Temps mange la vie,
Et l’obscur Ennemi qui nous ronge le cœur
Du sang que nous perdons croît et se fortifie !

 

Catullus iii

english translation

Catullus iii

original Latin poem

Catullus iii

Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque
et quantum est hominum venustiorum!
passer mortuus est meae puellae,
passer, deliciae meae puellae,
quem plus illa oculis suis amabat;
nam mellitus erat, suamque norat
ipsa tam bene quam puella matrem,
nec sese a gremio illius movebat,
sed circumsiliens modo huc modo illuc
ad solam dominam usque pipiabat.
qui nunc it per iter tenebricosum
illuc unde negant redire quemquam.
at vobis male sit, malae tenebrae
Orci, quae omnia bella devoratis;
tam bellum mihi passerem abstulistis.
o factum male! o miselle passer!
tua nunc opera meae puellae
flendo turgiduli rubent ocelli.

 

Ryan Wilson

Ryan Wilson is the editor of Literary Matters and the author of The Stranger World (Measure Press, 2017), winner of the Donald Justice Prize. Recent work has appeared or will appear in Birmingham Poetry Review, Five Points, the Hopkins Review, the New Criterion, the Sewanee Review, the Yale Review, and The Best American Poetry 2018. He teaches at the Catholic University of America, and he lives with his wife north of Baltimore.

 

 

Catullus (Gaius Valerius Catullus)

Gaius Valerius Catullus (c. 84 BC – 54 BC) was a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic whose work had a profound influence on later Latin poets, including Ovid, Horace, and Virgil. Approximately 116 of Catullus’s often-translated poems have survived.

 

 

Arthur Rimbaud

Arthur Rimbaud (1854 – 1891) was a French poet who wrote some of the most remarkable poetry and prose of the nineteenth century. He prefigured Surrealism and free verse, and was a major figure in Symbolism. Precocious and miserable in provincial France, he ran away to Paris at sixteen, where he read voraciously and lived in alcoholic squalor, sometimes with Paul Verlaine. Widely regarded as a prodigy, he wrote all of his poetry in the space of less than five years. Before age twenty-one, he burned his last manuscripts and is not known to have written other work.

 

Charles Baudelaire

Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1897) holds the most wide-ranging influence of the French Symbolist poets. A respected reviewer and critic whose translations of Edgar Allan Poe were much admired in his time, he died young, at only forty-six, but left behind a legacy of work at the center of which stands his masterpiece, the poems of Les Fleurs du mal, first published in 1857 to shock and acclaim.

 

Horace ii.10

english translation

Horace ii.10

original Latin poem

Horace ii.10

Rectius vives, Licini, neque altum
semper urgendo neque, dum procellas
cautus horrescis, nimium premendo
            litus iniquum.

Auream quisquis mediocritatem
diligit, tutus caret obsoleti
sordibus tecti, caret invidenda
            sobrius aula.

Saepius ventis agitatur ingens
pinus et celsae graviore casu
decidunt turres feriuntque summos
            fulgura montis.

Sperat infestis, metuit secundis
alteram sortem bene praeparatum
pectus. Informis hiemes reducit
            Iuppiter; idem

summovet. Non, si male nunc, et olim
sic erit : quondam cithara tacentem
suscitat Musam neque semper arcum
            tendit Apollo.

Rebus angustis animosus atque
fortis adpare ; sapienter idem
contrahes vento nimium secundo
            turgida vela.

 

Ryan Wilson

Ryan Wilson was born in Griffin, Georgia, and raised in nearby Macon. His work appears widely, in periodicals such as First Things, Five Points, the Hopkins Review, the New Criterion, the Sewanee Review, and the Yale Review. His first book, The Stranger World, was awarded the 2017 Donald Justice Poetry Prize and was published in hardcover by Measure Press in June of 2017.

 

Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus)

Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65 BC–8 BC), “Horace” to the English-speaking world, was a Roman lyrical poet of satire and historical/pastoral odes. Son of a freedman, eventually he became close friends with Virgil. His famous Ars poetica has been an abc of poetry practice and criticism. He was given a farm near Tivoli, and there he wrote his pastoral and other poems. His main works are his Satires, Odes, Epodes, and Epistles. His Ars suggests that a poet should read widely, and be precise and plain in thought and speech.

 

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