Long Une Poems

 Translation of Eric Mottram’s Poem 33 in Interrogation Rooms by T. Wignesan

33.  on a vu un homme courir/ de la scène de crime un homme est maintenant en train d’aider/ la police avec...

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Translation with commentary of an archetypal Wild West Classic : " Summer Wine "

(I'd wage my bottom diamond dime future generations will re-discover and treasure this true American classic like only a few others of...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s Courbet: Elegy 8 by T. Wignesan

Blanches oeuvres ouvertes
résident dans les jours
la surface du banc de travail est noire
les géraniums-lierres
les fougères et les adragans
accumulent leurs oeuvres et jours:
La toile noire de Courbet
un...

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Translation of Les Moulins de mon Cœur-THE WINDMILLS OF YOUR MIND by T. Wignesan

(For the orignal text in French by Eddy MARNAY : see here below. The English version by Marilyn and Alan BERGMAN differs...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s Twentythird Legal by T. Wignesan

Le vingt-troisième légal

pendant la guerre le peuple devient obéissent de nouveau
plein du respect (et) de la confiance les enfants naïfs dans la foi
la gouvernance nécessaire  ...

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The ship came like a flying horse, at an inexact time
Our brother-sailor, from the Pantheon of Poets, was on board
Jean Pierre Basilic Dantor Frankétienne D’argent
Who wrote, in haste, the last act
Happened to be miraculously on...

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

"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis, and an...

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UNQUOTABLE QUOTES: L (50) - Tongue-Teasers

The « early bird catches the worm » only because the worm has not woken up yet.

« I don’t love you ! I hated your father ! » - must...

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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 of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis, and an...

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La Charte des Droits de l’Homme pour les Aborigènes - Translation of Oodgeroo Noonuccal's Aboriginal Charter of Rights by T. Wignesan


Nous avons besoin de l’espoir, pas de racisme,
La fraternité, pas d’ostracisme
Du progrès pour les Noirs,...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s A Faithful Private 7 with excerpts from “Notes on Poetics” by T. Wignesan

(Note: With this post, I bring to a close EM’s pamphlet collection: Faithful Private, GENERA editions by Colin Simms,...

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You’ll be a man tomorrow, child, yes,
If you respect animals and pristine nature,
If you don’t kill elephants for ivory,
If you don’t kill the whales for soap,

You’ll be a man if you can stop time
If you...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN - Part Four by T. Wignesan


"Instead of an item in a school of rhetoric, the poem could have variety of articulations, continuity and discontinuity, sentence and parataxis,...

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For the Valentine’s season
Send forth a tastefully written card
To any wonderfully wise person
Is a good endeavor. That’s not bad.

However, sending exquisite flowers
Is the best, sweetest archetypal way
To say, I love you many times over
Over, and...

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Translation of Kendji Girac and Claudio Capeo's Que Dieu me pardonne by T Wignesan 

Lyrics by Kendji Girac and Renaud REBILLAUD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xP2jp31jFMc

(The two young French songsters' duet, now, yo-yo-ing in the upper echelons of c-Star...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s HOMAGE TO PAUL ELUARD by T. Wignesan

(Note: Here, I retain EM’s translations into English from Paul Eluard’s poems and his source language quotations from “this vital spirits…” onwards, for, according...

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 Translation of Eric Mottram’s A Faithful Private - 1 by T. Wignesan

                      ...

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L'Assimilation – Non! Translation of Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s “Assimilation – No !” by T. Wignesan

Born Kathleen Jean Mary RUSKA on November 3, 1920, in the North Stradbroke Island, off Queensland, she was deemed as an aboriginal...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s TWENTYEIGHTH LEGAL (Part One) by T. Wignesan
 
N.B. If any one is interested in reading the continuation of the extracts of letters that Eric Mottram wrote from America during 1965-66 to...

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Translation of YESTERDAY WHEN I WAS YOUNG
By T. Wignesan
(Written by : Herbert Kretzmer)

(Variously sung in a host of styles, moods and orchestration by
exquisite soul-movers like Roberta Flack, Shirley Bassey, Charles Aznavour, Glen Campbell, Andy Williams,...

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It is not mandatory
However, I feel that it is my duty
To respond to Carl Brouard
‘Knowing how to drink is not an art
Drinking is not a duty’
But a necessity which is obligatory
As it is crucial even...

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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 heart of all versions of « The Autumn Leaves "...

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Mama – Translation of Kevin Gilbert’s « Mum » by T. Wignesan

Kevin Gilbert (July 10, 1933 – April 1, 1993) - father of Irish-English ancestry, mother an aboriginal from New South Wales - was orphaned...

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Claquée j’ai quitté mon lit douillé 
J’ai peur de sombrer dans ma tête souillée 
Dans mes rêves je suis toujours exilée 
Je n’ai jamais trouvé le sommeil espéré  
J’ai savouré le mal qui me...

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“belles lettres” 

It’s a slow drifting
off, that moment 
before you dive 
into the dark

you surface 
to find a boat 
surrounded by 
shining pearls,

Styx, a mirror 
reflecting 
otherworldly stars
hypnotic, 

you trail
your long 
pale slender fingers 
in...

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