The guide was quoting Verlaine to me: <br />in one gesture of easy fine feeling <br />he swept his hand over Paris, <br />under the rustle of the thin rain. <br />The verses are irrecoverable, <br />they ripple like water lit by stars. <br />‘The sound of it, sir, is beautiful.’ <br />I nod, I say the sound is beautiful. <br />Paris forgets. Verlaine in vellum <br />standing as if by the decree of God <br />stiff on the book-shelf of the bourgeoisie. <br />How beautiful it is with gin and lime <br />in prospect of a good night of sleep, <br />that short, discreet reading aloud. <br />Proper to do some honour to Verlaine. <br />And beautiful? <br />Beautiful. <br />But this <br />as I remember not as you remember <br />belongs to you and I return you it. <br />Verlaine afflicted you. I do not know you. <br />That misfit of your false pieties <br />inflamed with alcohol-wrong, you remarked. <br />Am I too hasty? You distort your faces. <br />Beautiful? <br />It murdered him by inches. <br />He was assassinated. Jeers hit at him <br />from the street-corners. Your kind of <br />morality consumed him to ashes. <br />Oh tight drum-bellies drinking to Verlaine! <br />-these poet-murderers are poet-quoters. <br /> <br /> <br />Translated by Peter Levi and Robin Milner-Gulland<br /><br />Yevgeny Yevtushenko<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/verlaine-2/
