It is Day 804 of the Daily Poems, and our translator poet Timothy Adès dips into Paul Verlaine’s Sea. The sea is beautiful. La mer est plus belle que les cathédrales. Absinthe enthusiast Verlaine (1844-1896) was elected France’s “Prince of Poets” by his peers in 1894.
The Sea
Verlaine
Translated from French by Timothy Adès
La mer est plus belle que les cathédrales:
The sea has more beauty
Than all our cathedrals:
Our wet-nurse on duty,
Our cradler of rattles:
The sea, oratory
Of God’s mother Mary!
The sea has the guerdons,
The fearsome, the good.
I’ve heard how it pardons,
Rebukes its foul mood.
In all the great ocean,
No ossification!
And oh, how forgiving,
Despite misbehaving!
A kindly breeze haunts
The billow, and chants
“All ye who lose heart,
Grieve not, but depart!”
And under the skies
Benign and serene
It takes on a guise
Pink, blue, grey, or green.
There’s nothing more fair.
We cannot compare!
Verlaine
Translated from French by Timothy Adès