Personal anthology: Guillaume Apollinaire

By on July 10th, 2007

I noticed this poem somewhere on a LibraryThing discussion thread, and it stayed with me. Turns out it’s in Apollinaire’s Alcools.

L’adieu

J’ai cueilli ce brin de bruyère
L’automne est morte souviens-t’en
Nous ne nous verrons plus sur terre
Odeur du temps brin de bruyère
Et souviens-toi que je t’attends

— Guillaume Apollinaire

And here’s my (rather clumsy) translation:

The Goodbye

I have plucked this sprig of heather
Autumn is dead remember
Never again on earth will we see each other
Odor of time sprig of heather
And remember I wait for you

There’s more on Apollinaire at Ubuweb, including a sound file of him reading "Le Pont Mirabeau." All the poems in Alcools are available in French on Wikisource. (Incidentally, quite a few of Apollinaire’s poems have been set to music; my beloved Pink Martini adapted one of them, "Hôtel," as the title track on their album Sympathique.)

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2 Responses to “Personal anthology: Guillaume Apollinaire”

  1. brd says:
    July 13, 2007 at 2:28 pm

    Your “clumsy” translation makes my heart ache, for I know both that good-bye and the final hope of that waiting for the beloved.

  2. Amanda says:
    July 17, 2007 at 5:37 pm

    As do I. It’s a hard poem to do justice to.