I'm rocking the poem a day challenge. I can feel it. My voice has really come into its own. I wish I could say the same for the translation a day challenge. But the more I try to translate poems, the more I realize I really can't at my level. The best I can promise is that I'll give you a general sense of the poem. I'm stoked to see how that will change as I keep learning more about this language.
Day 22
Where I’m going, where I’m from
Jacques Prévert
from La pluie et le beau temps
French version here
Where I’m going, where I’m from
Why I am soaked
Come on, you can see.
It’s raining.
The rain, it’s rain.
I’m going down, and then
And then that’s it.
Follow your path
Like I follow mine.
It’s for my pleasure
That I wallow in the mud.
The rain, it makes me laugh.
I laugh at everything and everything and everything.
If you cry easily
Go back home
Cry for yourself
But leave me
Leave me, leave me leave me, leave me.
I don’t want to hear the sound of your voice,
Follow your path
Like I follow mine.
The only man who I loved
it was you who killed him
Clubbed, trampled…
finished.
I saw his blood run
run into the creek
into the creek.
Follow your path
like I follow mine
The man who I loved
is dead, his head in the mud.
That I can hate you
hate you…it’s crazy…it’s crazy…it’s crazy
And you you wait on me,
you are too good for me,
way too good, believe me.
You are good…good like the rat keeper is good for the rat…
but one day…one day will come when the rat will bite you…
Follow your path,
good men…fine men.
Day 23
Memory
Jacques Prévert
from La pluie et le beau temps
French version here
Twenty years after one hundred years later
still the sordid musketeers
still the same swashbucklers
still the carriers of the banner
Child I saw an image
of men in black clothes with a green face
standing around a man named Ferrer
Oh poor living men
how you have tough adversaries
still the same without one change
oh unhappy executioners
similar to those before.
Day 24
Familiar
Jacques Prévert
from La pluie et le beau temps
French version here
The mother does the knitting
The son goes to war
She finds this all natural the mother
And the father what is he doing the father?
He does business
His wife the knitting
His son the war
He his business
Hi finds this all natural the father
And the son and the son
What does he find the son?
He doesn’t find anything absolutely nothing the son
The son his mother does the knitting his father his business he the war
When he has finished the war
He will do business with his father
The war goes on the mother goes on she knits
The father goes on he does his business
The son is killed he doesn’t go on anymore.
The father and the mother go to the cemetery
They find this all natural the father and the mother
Life continues life with knitting the war business
Business the war the knitting the war
Business business business
Life with the cemetery.
Day 25
At the florist's
Jacques Prévert
from La pluie et le beau temps
French version here
A man enters a florist's
and chooses flowers
the florist wraps the flowers
the man put his hand in his pocket
to get some money
money to pay for the flowers
but at the same time he puts
suddenly
his hand on his heart
and he falls
At the same time that he falls
the money rolls on the ground
and then the flowers fall
at the same time as the man
at the same time as the money
and the florist stays there
with the money that rolls
with the flowers that rot
with the man who dies
obviously all this is very sad
and she has to do something
the florist
but she doesn’t know how to take it
she doesn’t know
what to start with
There are so many things to do
with this man who died
and these flowers that rot
and this money
this money that rolls
that won’t stop rolling.
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