Marceline Desbordes-Valmore (1786-1858) Translated by Edmund Blunden

[silverflurry.livejournal.com]

My Room

High up where I live
Right against the sky;
Pale and meditive
The moon comes here and I.
Let folks ring below,
What do I care today?
It is no one that I know-
One being gone away.

Unseen by others here
I stitch each silken flower,
Within inward tear on tear
Yet passionless: my tower
Gives me the cloudless sky.
From here I see the blue,
Star on star espy.
I see the tempest too.

Opposite my own
A chair stands through the hours.
His it was, that one;
One instant, it was ours.
There it stands, the chair,
A ribbon signing it,
As in a calm despair-
My case, placed opposite.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This poem is taken from World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time ed. Katherine Washburn and John S Major 1998.