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The Alexandrine Plan
by Ciaran Carson
In these translations from the sonnets of the major nineteenth-century French poets — Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and Mallarmé — the relation of the poet to his world is adapted to the wild, fruitful imagination of Ciaran Carson, while formally the poems hold to their "Alexandrine plan," twelve-syllable lines in the rhyme schemes of the original. As Carson brings these poems into his own idiom and sensibility, he restores, with starting freshness, the essential joy and verve of the earlier poems.
"[A] reader with even a smattering of French might appreciate how thoroughly Carson both translates — that is, carries across — and then transplants in an altogether different soil and climate the richness of those originals." Thomas O'Grady, Boston Review
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Au Cabaret-Vert
Cinq heures du soir
Depuis huit jours, j'avais déchiré mes bottines
Aux cailloux des chemins. J'entrais à Charleroi.
— Au Cabaret-Vert: je demandai des tartines
De beurre et du jambon qui fût à moitié froid.
Bienheureux, j'allongeai les jambes sous la table
Verte: je contemplai les sujets très naïfs
De la tapisserie. — Et ce fut adorable,
Quand la fille aux tétons énormes, aux yeux vifs,
— Celle-là, ce n'est pas un baiser qui l'épeure! —
Rieuse, m'apporta des tartines de beurre,
Du jambon tiède, dans un plat colorié,
Du jambon rose et blanc parfumé d'une gousse
D'ail, — et m'emplit la chope immense, avec sa mousse
Que dorait un rayon de soleil arriéré.
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The Green Bar
Five hours of night
I'd ripped my boots to pieces on the pebbly roads
Since Monday was a week. I walked into Kingstown.
Found myself in the old Green Bar. I ordered loads
Of cool ham, bread and butter. It was nearly sundown.
Pleased as Punch, I stretched my legs beneath the shamrock
Table. I admired the tacky '50s décor.
Then this vacant waitress in a tit-enhancing frock
Came on and wiggled up to me, her eyes galore
With hints of smoochy kisses and her gorgeous platter
Of green gherkins, slabs of ham and bread and butter,
Rosy, garlic-scented ham; and then she filled my beer mug
With a bright smile, and turned herself into a ray
Of sunshine, like an unexpected Lady Day.
I guzzled it all into me. Glug. Glug. Glug. Glug.
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