Ars Poetica

for Charles Morice

Music first and foremost! In your verse,

Choose those meters odd of syllable,

Supple in the air, vague, flexible,

Free of pounding beat, heavy or terse.

Choose the words you use—now right, now wrong—

With abandon: when the poet’s vision

Couples the Precise with Imprecision,

Best the giddy shadows of his song:

Eyes veiled, hidden, dark with mystery,

Sunshine trembling in the noonday glare,

Starlight, in the tepid autumn air,

Shimmering in night-blue filigree!

For Nuance, not Color absolute,

Is your goal; subtle and shaded hue!

Nuance! It alone is what lets you

Marry dream to dream, and horn to flute!

Shun all cruel and ruthless Railleries;

Hurtful Quip, lewd Laughter, that appall

Heaven, Azure-eyed, to tears; and all

Garlic-stench scullery recipes!

Take vain Eloquence and wring its neck!

Best you keep your Rhyme sober and sound,

Lest it wander, reinless and unbound—

How far? Who can say?—if not in check!

Rhyme! Who will its infamies revile?

What deaf child, what Black of little wit

Forged with worthless bauble, fashioned it

False and hollow-sounding to the file?

Music first and foremost, and forever!

Let your verse be what goes soaring, sighing,

Set free, fleeing from the soul gone flying

Off to other skies and loves, wherever.

Let your verse be aimless chance, delighting

In good-omened fortune, sprinkled over

Dawn’s wind, bristling scents of mint, thyme, clover . . .

All the rest is nothing more than writing.

Copyright Credit: Paul Verlaine, "Ars Poetica" from One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Edition, translated by Norman R. Shapiro. Copyright © 1999 by Norman R. Shapiro. Reprinted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.

Source: One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Edition (The University of Chicago Press, 1999)