terese coe

You Mock Me

english translation

You Mock Me

original French poem

“Tu te moques, jeune ribaude”

Tous les charbons ardents
Allument là-dedans
Le plus chaud de leur braise ;
Un feu couvert en sort,
Plus fumeux et plus fort
Que l’air d’une fournaise.

J’ai la tête froide et gelée,
D’avoir ma cervelle écoulée
A ce limonier, par l’espace
De quatre ans, sans m’en savoir grâce,
Et lui voulant vaincre le cul,
Moi-même je me suis vaincu.

Ainsi, le fol sapeur
Au fondement trompeur
D’un Boulevard s’arrête,
Quand le faix, tout soudain
Ebranlé de sa main,
Lui écrase la tête.

 

Heinrich Heine

Heinrich was born in Düsseldorf, Germany in either 1797 or 1799. In 1831 he took exile in France, where he often struggled financially despite irregular patronage from a millionaire uncle. With freedom of speech he developed an international reputation for the lyricism, wordplay, irony, and excoriating satire of his poems, and was called the last of the Romantics. In 1841 he married Crescence Eugénie Mirat (“Mathilde”), who cared for him during eight years of paralysis; he wrote from bed until his death in 1856.

 

Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard (1524 – 1585) was attached to both the French and Scottish courts in his youth; he was later named royal poet for the House of Valois. He led the group of poets called the Pleiades, who looked to classical poetry for paradigms but wrote in French rather than Latin to encourage the development of French literature. In An Introduction to the French Poets, Geoffrey Brereton writes, “He projected . . . an image of his own century. . . .

 

Terese Coe

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have appeared in Able Muse, Alaska Quarterly Review, the Cincinnati Review, New American Writing, Ploughshares, Poetry, Threepenny Review, Agenda, the Moth, New Walk, New Writing Scotland, Poetry Review, the TLS, the Stinging Fly, and many other publications and anthologies. Her poem “More” was heli-dropped across London in the 2012 London Olympics Rain of Poems, and her latest collection of poems, Shot Silk, was published by Kelsay Books.

 

Challenge for a Mounted Tournament in the Form of a Ballet

english translation

Challenge for a Mounted Tournament in the Form of a Ballet

original French poem

Cartel pour le combat à cheval, en forme de balet

Ces nouveaux Chevaliers par moy vous font entendre
Que leurs premiers ayeuls furent fils de Méandre,
À qui le fleuve apprit à tourner leurs chevaux
Comme il tourne et se vire et se plie en ses eaux.

Pyrrhe en celle façon sur le tombeau d’Achille
Feit une danse armée, et aux bords de Sicile
Enée en decorant son pere de tournois,
Feit sauter les Troyens au branle du harnois,
Où les jeunes enfans en cent mille manieres
Meslerent les replis de leurs courses guerrières.

Pallas qui les conduit, a de sa propre main
Façonné leurs chevaux, et leur donna le frein,
Mais plustost un esprit, qui sagement les guide
Par art, obeissant à la loy de la bride.

Tantost vous les voirrez à courbettes danser,
Tantost se reculer, s’approcher, s’avancer,
S’escarter, s’esloigner, se serrer, se rejoindre
D’une pointe allongée, et tantost d’une moindre,
Contrefaisant la guerre au semblant d’une paix,
Croisez, entrelassez de droit et de biais,
Tantost en forme ronde, et tantost en carrée,
Ainsi qu’un Labyrinth, dont la trace esgarée
Nous abuse les pas en ses divers chemins,

Ainsi qu’on voit danser en la mer les Dauphins,
Ainsi qu’on voit volet par le travers des nues
En diverses façons une troupe de Grues.

 

      — [abridged]

 

Pierre de Ronsard

Pierre de Ronsard (1524 – 1585) was for many years the royal poet for the House of Valois, memorializing numerous kings and members of the French court as well as official events and literary figures, including Henri II, Charles IX, François Rabelais, and Marguerite de Navarre. Among the more than one thousand poems he wrote were sonnets on Petrarch, odes after Pindar and Horace, elegies, eclogues, songs, and witty if sometimes dark light verse.

 

Terese Coe

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have appeared in Poetry, The Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, New American Writing, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Smartish Pace, Tar River Poetry and The Huffington Post; in the UK, The TLS, Poetry Review, Agenda, New Walk Magazine, Orbis, and Warwick Review; in Ireland, The Stinging Fly; and in many other publications, including anthologies.

 

Happiness

english translation

Happiness

original German poem

VI

Nicht lange täuschte mich das Glück,
Das du mir zugelogen,
Dein Bild ist wie ein falscher Traum
Mir durch das Herz gezogen. 

Der Morgen kam, die Sonne schien,
Der Nebel ist zerronnen;
Geendigt hatten wir schon längst,
Eh wir noch kaum begonnen.

 

Heinrich Heine

Heinrich Heine was born in Düsseldorf in either 1797 or 1799. He has been called the last of the Romantics, no doubt because he clearly skirted Romanticism through irony and satire. His university career progressed from Bonn in 1819 to Göttingen in 1820 to the more intellectual climate of the University of Berlin; by 1823 he had fled Berlin as well. When Prussia legislated against Jews taking university posts, Heine converted to Protestantism (1825), saying this was “the ticket of admission into European culture,” and changed his name from Harry to Heinrich.

 

Terese Coe

Terese Coe’s poems and translations have appeared in Poetry, The Threepenny Review, Ploughshares, New American Writing, Alaska Quarterly Review, The Cincinnati Review, Smartish Pace, Tar River Poetry and The Huffington Post; in the UK, The TLS, Poetry Review, Agenda, New Walk Magazine, Orbis, and Warwick Review; in Ireland, The Stinging Fly; and in many other publications, including anthologies.

 

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