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Song of Autumn Featured

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 Pairs autumn
 
 

I

Soon we'll be diving into freezing shadows.

So long the brilliance of summer so short.

Already I hear the ominous echo

Of wood logs knocking on courtyard cobbles.

 

And now Winter will take its toll: anger,

Hatred, shakes, horrors, hard labours, 

Like the sun in its arctic circle of hell,

My heart will congeal to a small red block, frozen.

 

So I quake when I hear the dropping of logs;

More deadly to me than the rap of a scaffold.

My mind is like a castle tower shattered

By a battering ram, relentless, massive..

 

Till I'm rocked by each monotonous blow,

Nails hammered in haste in a coffin,

But for whom? -  yesterday summer, autumn now!

These doom-laden sounds - like a valediction. 

 

II

 

I love your wide eyes, their emerald glint,

Subtle and warm, but I'm cold and bitter.

And nothing, your love, the bed, this fire, beats

A glimpse of sunlight over the sea.

 

Yet you love me regardless: gentle, maternal

Despite my ingratitude, unworthiness;

Lover or sister, you are that short lived bliss

Of a setting sun or a glorious autumn.

 

Cut short! The grave yawns, voraciously.

Oh let me rest my forehead on your knees,

And savour, while missing the white-hot summer,

The soft yellow rays of a dying season. 

 
 autumn-charles-baudelaire
 
Translated from Baudelaire's Chant D'Automne by Peter Jukes
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