Long Peine Poems

Translation of the Elegy: On Marceline Desbordes-Valmore - À L'amour - Poem by Marcel Moreau Translated by T. Wignesan

Reprends de ce bouquet les trompeuses couleurs,      (Take back the dubious colours...

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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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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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Translation of Eric Mottram’s TIME SIGHT UNSEEN, Part Three 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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Translation of " Those were the Days, My Friend " by T. Wignesan

Ces jours éloignés que nous avions partagés, Mon Ami

(A re-make of an earlier Russian song, produced by Paul McCartenay and sung by
 Mary...

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Translation of Eric Mottram’s KRIM: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY TO SEPTEMBER 1989 - I by T. Wignesan

( This poem is from the collection, ESTUARIES: Poems 1989-91. Twickenham: Solaris, 1992, 62p. Pub. by Yasmin and Peterjon Skelt. Back...

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She wades in until the water reaches her waist,
looks out and continues into the endless sea.
Her imagined long gown floats behind her.

Her little girl shoulder blades 
become hidden beneath the water.
Each time she raises her...

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Translated: Si la vie demande ça by Laura and Chris Mayne by T. Wignesan.

If Life would not wish it otherwise
 
[Note: The two sister French Caribbean-Martinique Black “Blues” Swan : Laura and Chris MAYNE (lyrics...

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IF EVER I HAD A COUNTRY - LXXXII

    for Carlos Bousoño, the eminent Spanish critic, poet and professor
           who maintained that if...

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Femme, femme que j’aimais tant
Oh ! Il y a plusieurs printemps
Qu’il faisait beau temps
Et le vent sifflait lestement bas et lent
Oh ! Femme, tu fus jeune, pétillante et forte
Mignonne, maintenant, tu es morte
Tu es couchée...

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Mama has left
She is no longer alive
She left Mother Earth
She is in the cemetery
Mom is further on
She is, here and there, really
Mother is gone
And no longer here
With us, under the sun
Mommy is in Heaven
She looks...

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I see on a canvas, this face
The distant look, as detached from the world,
Behind me ,trying to decipher shadows
The unstable condition of the wind, and the ignored face of the days ...

Or maybe just,
A look...

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Au début de février, le changement saisonnier a peu avancé, 
Le chaud encore timide, le froid à peine enfui,
Un arbre se ressent du manque de fleur et de fruit
Il n'y a que des faibles feuilles...

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Devrais-je feindre l'ignorance pour cacher mes sentiments, 
Ou devrais-je vraiment m'en soucier, incapable de feindre? 
Tant de courage pour affronter l'inconnu, 
Pourtant muet devant elle, le cœur en peine.

Qui est-elle, demandez-vous, avec ce sourire éclatant,...

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La plainte au lever du jour pour les Morts – Translation of Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s “Dawn Wail for the Dead” by T. Wignesan

(Note: The style of the original smacks of hurried note-taking, say, by an anthropologist...

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Soon
the moon is black,
she is in mourning of the evening

Over the garden’s stones
Shadows are getting longer
from tomorrow

The confusion of the sky
The seedling of comets
The pulse of the planets

Will do nothing with the future
Just the scent...

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Stylo à la main
Je n’écris pas mon destin ni la fin
Mais cette aventure dans le train
Ce train de la vie que J’aime à l’infini 
Beaucoup de détours tous les jours 
Mais il n’y a pas...

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