past the wooded picnic place
and hidden under stones,
I kneel beside our unmarked grave
and intermix our bones.
je murmure mes sentiments
et tu me reconnais.
tu me donne tes beaux adieux;
et j'accept chacun, tu sais.
the mulch smells sweet and soft and sad
as I water weeds with tears.
I plant a kiss I hope will grow,
a boon throughout the years.
tous les arbres sont silencieux
quand je marche dans tes bras.
les écureuils sont morts, je dis
mais tu ne comprends pas.
I leave it then, like I left you,
and hope to stay away.
though memory's hands still clutch my own,
I know she'll die one day.
A translation, for interested parties:
French major here and I just got so excited when I saw the title and this poem did not disappoint. <33 I love how the rhythm stays the same throughout the French stanzas and you've done a nice job keeping the rhymes the same as well. (sometimes it is SO much easier to rhyme in French, tho) Just stopping by with a positive comment -- I really enjoyed this!
Heya Plume! Here with a review!
I adored this poem. Absolutely adored it. I like bilingual poems like this one. It works so well. It was such a sad one to read too and it reminded me of dead childhoods. With that said, let's get on with the review.
I'll start with some minor critiques. I didn't really find anything that was egregious. Granted, I am not a native French speaker and no one in my immediate family is either. I could ask my brother who studied French for years, but I'm honestly too lazy to do such a thing.
But for English critique, I noticed no other words are capitalized. But you always capitalize "I" and it was somewhat confusing. It's of course, a stylistic choice, but the idea is somewhat muddied with the choice to not capitalize your lines.
That's all I have for critiques. It was so good, so I shall praise this glorious, glorious work!
I love the French parts, even if I couldn't completely read with my own limited French. I think even if you were to translate your words into English and properly change some parts to keep the rhyming, it wouldn't be as heartfelt.
I LOVE the first stanza.
The rhythm was on point! It set the tone for "the squirrels are dead." The setting of walking through a park to realize that it's actually a graveyard feels like a metaphor for starkly realizing your childhood is over. You can never go back. Time marches on without you. And the small details you have like the graves being unmarked elevates this to such a high level.past the wooded picnic place
and hidden under stones,
I kneel beside our unmarked grave
and intermix our bones.
I'm just a sucker for alliterations. The rest of that stanza is also so bittersweet. The imagery of watering a kiss you hope will grow with your tears is so beautiful. I've never seen anything like it.the mulch smells sweet and soft and sad
Okay, I am obsssesssssseddddd with this. First of all, I'm in the process of learning french and this just scratched an itch I didn't know I needed scratched! I've been wanting to try to write poetry in french, but I'm not quite at the level I feel comfortable doing it yet (and I don't want to just write it in english and translate it), but I love how you used both english and french in this poem. It flows together absolutely seamlessly.
This has a very nostalgic, creepy quality that I really enjoy. Stanza one starts out absolutely great, the intermixing bones line is very satisfying.
In stanza three, I think you fall a little short on imagery with your line about watering the weeds with tears. This can be a pretty stereotypical image and I think there's definitely something a little more individualistic in that head of yours. I honestly think this stanza is the one that needs the most work, because your following two lines also lack the metaphor quality of all your other lines. How can you say this without relying on images we've heard before?
Overall, this poem hit every single point for me. I loved it! Keep up the great work, I love reading your poems. I'll be back for the next!
xoxo
Spark
omg a Plume poem !! =D i got so excited when i saw this xD
it's beautiful, and the rhyming in both languages is exquisite <3 like the mulch, this poem seems sweet and soft and sad, and i'll definitely be re-reading it and savoring the words (i might have to search up the pronunciations of the stanzas in french to appreciate it properly, lol). thank you for writing this work of art! <3
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