The Post Below

The post below is a coming together of my own thoughts and an attempt at a translation of Laforgue's Pierrots. Laforgue wrote these Pierrot poems as part of a longer work entitled L'immitation de notre dame la lune, which literally means The immitation of our Lady the Moon. 
Translation is always a dicy business. I realise that the first question is: how does the poet translator circumnavigate the problem that all poems are almost by their nature untranslatable? Has the poet/translator come up with a new poem> If so, how much is this a translation and how much a new poem masquerading as a translation?

I don't on my conscience know the answer to these questions. However , I will be as honest as I can. One of these poems is in fact a translation, the other is well....a transreflection, an extrapolation from the non-existence of a poem which does not have a material counterpart..

Pierrots

Pierrots iii

As dusk falls, these molesters

Of statues, deep in the parks,

Only offer their arms and attentions

To the least improperly dressed.

In a one-to-one with a woman

It feels as if there are three,

Mixing up tomorrow with yesterday,

Intensely demanding nothing.

Claiming, “I love you” with eyes

To the gods, ecstatically dead-pan,

Concluding their mad declaration

With, “Oh hell, shall we just leave it!”

…Until She, in forgetful daze,

Seized by one-knows-not-what need,

Drunk on moonlight, falls into their arms

Very far from respectable ways.

Pierrots After Hours

In a café over absinthe glasses

They stretch the tight rope of a gaze;

A tilting line that gently sways,

Linking them briefly to express

Mad steps with nonchalant disdain,

Twinned in the dim light where they drink,

Where to fly upwards is to sink

And losing balance is to gain

A new context for the curved Moon

the velvet sea she’s swimming through.

Their blood freezes: nothing more to do

Except fall; fallen, fly alone

Onto the blue cobbles where all’s well,

White clothes spread out, a drifting calm,

‘til whirr of metal, crash , alarm

As church clock grates its ancient bell.