Best Chanson Poems

Autumnal Dirge

(One of many possible translations* of « Chanson d’automne » by Paul Verlaine)

	for Sandra Feldman

Drawn out sobs
Violins
   of autumn
Wound my heart
Through a...

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Like Orpheus and Eurydice we dwell in realms apart
Without a Charon to help us cross the great divide
But my love for you sings to the...

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"The In-Between"

I ripped the pages of 
that tired old story 
from the heart, a body of work

buried the misdiagnosed slanders
then wiped their mouths
with the back...

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you spurn ... I burn
    your touch is aphotic nirvana
       a lurid and misty Elysium, pure
...

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Note: This is not a poem, just a riddle :)


Pour Juliette Girardot

Si vous me donnez 1000 essaie
Si vous me donnez 1000 valses
La réponse que je...

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Charles d'Orleans: a Medieval Marvel


Spring
by Charles d’Orleans (c. 1394-1465)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

Young lovers,
greeting the spring
fling themselves downhill,
making cobblestones ring
with their wild leaps and...

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Tu le fera, n’est-ce pas, Papa ? – Translation of Kevin Gilbert’s « Won’t you, Dad ? » by T. Wignesan

Si toutes les jolies mélodies
de...

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Can intimacy be labeled as de trop?
I don't think. My sister offers me critique
Of such silly actions! But I still crave more!
Our nights together were...

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Autumn Leaves/Les feuilles mortes de Jacques PREVERT (1900-77) 
Translated by T. Wignesan 

(Note: As far as I can make out, this poem is at the...

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The Lay of Sir Donald

(Or: Le Chanson de Donald)

An orange man – of red and trailing tie,
Small hands, and copious twitter-feed – sing I!
Most staunch...

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Hearken
strengthening sun,
resplendent early June-
nature's territorial in
chanson....

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Oft in My Thought
by Charles D'Orleans
translation by Michael R. Burch

So often in my busy mind I sought,
Around the advent of the fledgling year,
For something pretty...

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Ceux qui célèbrent ‘88 – Translation of Kevin Gilbert’s « Celebrators  ‘88 »» by T. Wignesan

(This poem mocks the bicentenary celebrations of the founding...

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I kindle a candle at every bend
as years of life I routinely spend.
It is in the haze of one such light
that I step as a...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN, Part Two by T. Wignesan

"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety...

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