Thursday, October 09, 2008

Autumn

Last year at this time I was writing about the benefits of spreading dung on your field. This year I’ve come up with something a little more romantic. When Christian was 6 he had a poem to learn about autumn. It caught my imagination and I’ve often wondered what it was and who wrote it. This morning I Googled it. It was by a Belgian poet called Maurice Careme (1899-1978). He had been a teacher for some of his life and wrote many of his poems for children. In France you will find 5 schools named after him. Don’t worry – the poem is short and I’ve dared to translated it.

Autumn
Autumn in the corner of the woods,
Plays harmonica.
What fun for the leaves!
They waltz in the arms
Of the wind that carries them.
They say they are dead
But no one believes it.
Autumn in the corner of the woods,
Plays harmonica.

Maurice Careme

3 comments:

Dru Marland said...

I wonder why autumn chose a harmonica to play? Thanks for posting that. We dug out the original too, just for the heck of it. And you posted it on National Poetry Day, too!

The leaves in the streets are starting to get a bit soggy; the sound changes as you stick your foot into them while riding your bicycle. Soon they will have glued themselves to the road. Apparently in Japan one of the names for retired husbands who hang around the house all day is 'wet leaves'...

Anji said...

Dru: I suppose because Autumn likes playing the harmonica. Hope you approved of my translation and I didn't know it was National Poetry Day. We do ours in March.

Our leaves are still crunchy because the weather has been pretty good. I love the 'wet leaves' idea. I'll tell Rob so he's prepared.

Dru Marland said...

You got me thinking there; I was trying to remember that line from Verlain, but I misremembered it as 'trombones d'automne'. Now I think of it, I like the idea of trombones of autumn. Sounding across woodland glades, or some such.

We liked the translation. K's Fr teacher is a bit uninspired, and we need to spice the lingo up a bit. Thank you.