CONFUSIONS


              In the framework of
          the doors, landscapes running mad
              with entire plains —

              waters, cornfields, skies
          gulped down in cruel whirlwinds
              where telegraph poles

              keep falling, trailing
          wires like broken umbrellas
              in stinks of burning

              coal, boiling water
          and with howls of a thousand
              giants suddenly

              flagellated with
          repeated screechings. — But what
              is all this to me

              as my eyes seem to
          fill with pale visions that warm
              my heart — one soft voice

              murmurs to me still —
          lovely, noble, sonorous —
              clue interpreting

              all these confusions
          in sounds so pure in all this
              wagon's brutal rhythms.


          Haiku transcription of Paul Verlaine's
          La Bonne Chanson.
          © Translated by James Kirkup, 2008




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