Moonlight

Your soul is like a landscape fantasy,
Where masks and Bergamasks, in charming wise,
Strum lutes and dance, just a bit sad to be
Hidden beneath their fanciful disguise.

Singing in minor mode of life's largesse
And all-victorious love, they yet seem quite
Reluctant to believe their happiness,
And their song mingles with the pale moonlight,

The calm, pale moonlight, whose sad beauty, beaming,
Sets the birds softly dreaming in the trees,
And makes the marbled fountains, gushing, streaming--
Slender jet-fountains--sob their ecstasies.

Paul Verlaine

"Art poétique", from Jadis et naguère (1884) - Paul Verlaine

Let's hear the music first and foremost,
And that means no more one-two-one-twos…
Something more vague instead, something lighter
Dissolving in air, weightless as air.


When you choose your words, no need to search
In strict dictionaries for pinpoint
Definitions. Better the subtle
And heady Songs of Imprecision.

Color's forbidden, only Nuance!

Grip eloquence by the throat and squeeze
It to death. And while you're about it
You might corral that runaway, Rhyme,
Or you'll get Rhyme Without End, Amen.


Who will denounce that criminal, Rhyme?
Tone-deaf children or crazed foreigners
No doubt fashioned its paste jewellery,
Tinplate on top, hollow underneath.

You must let your poems ride their luck
On the back of the sharp morning air
Touched with the fragrance of mint and thyme…
And everything else is literature.

- Paul Verlaine