Clair de Lune - Poem

This poem was inspired by Claude Debussy’s Suite Bergamasque: III Clair de Lune and the poem of the same name that inspired him, by Paul Verlaine – attached below.

Take from it what you will, but I feel like a sense of longing and the existence of a simultaneously filled yet unfulfilled balance are imminent.

Written in March 2018.

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Clair de Lune

View from the campsite on the Acatenango Volcano, Guatemala.

The day foresees the shadows

That mask my body whole.

And the moonlight draws out my soul,

Letting it dance in its clairvoyant grasp,

That lifts it like a weeping spirit

In need of a partner for tonight.

Their temperance and lack of touch

Unite them even more,

Until again they meet another time,

For their love they surely swore.

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Clair de Lune - Paul Verlaine

Your soul is a delicate landscape

Where roam charming masks and bergamasques

Playing the lute and dancing and seeming almost

Sad under their whimsical disguises.

While singing in a minor key

Of victorious love and easy life

They don't seem to believe in their happiness

And their song mingles with the moonlight,

With the sad and beautiful moonlight,

Which makes the birds in the trees dream

And sob with ecstasy the water streams,

The great slim water streams among the marbles.