Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) formed with Stéphane Mallarmé and Charles Baudelaire the so-called "Decadents,"
part of the French symbolist movement. His major works include Romances Sans Paroles (1874), Les
Poetes Maudits (1884), Amour (1888) and Mes Prisons (1893).





Two Adaptations of a Poem


I.

I often have this strange and penetrating dream
of an unknown woman whom I love, who loves me.
And she is never quite the same,
nor quite another, in her love for me, in knowing me.

Because she knows - yes, she alone
sees into my heart. Yes, she alone is no antagonist.
Her hands can only wipe clean my brow,
refreshing what was damp with tears.

Is she blond or dark? I ignore all that.
Her name? I remember only that she is gentle, sonorous,
as those loved in some distant, now estranged, life.

Her eyes gaze as if from a statue's marble brow;
her voice, so distant, calm, grave.
                  Her voice is the dear lament of ancient suicides.



II.

I wake often to this piercing vision:
a strange and unknown beauty whom I love

who loves...

                  She's never quite the same woman

nor another,
                  not quite, except in desire.

Her eyes ... my mind, stripped as glass.
...hands cleave away the armored breast
and swipe clean the brow...to find
the eyes: sunk spears in tear-pools,
                                            too long at rest.

Does she but touch, or stab with painted nails.

I never saw.

Her face seemed cold
                            and pale;
her movements recalled a life of exile.

From a hardened marble brow her grey eyes gaze.
Her faint and somber chants echo the grave.
The beg revenge:
                              those lovers killed by love's denial.







Nevermore

Old dreams, old images, why do you stir in me?
In autumn, when the thrush hung in the vacant air,
and the sun threw down her rays in one color
on the yellowing wood; wind erupted in the leaves.

We walked, so alone with one another: dreaming,
she and I. Our thoughts, like her hair, blew in the wind.
Just there, she turned her trembling eyes on me and said,
"What made your days joyful?" in a voice of living

gold. So polished and deep-ringing, that angelic tone.
A small smile was all I gave - and that alone,
before I kissed her whitening hand in devotion.

The first flowers so lightly surrender their scent.
And that one sound, with its enchanting sussuration,
the first murmuring yes that her lips dare send.






James Wilson has written reviews for Slope and The Boston Review. He will attend Notre Dame University.