Mirabeau Bridge

  
Mirabeau Bridge

Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine

And our love

        Must I recall

Joy always followed after pain

Let night come toll the hour

Days move on I remain

Hand in hand let’s linger face to face

While beneath

   The bridge of our embrace

The weary swell of timeless glances flows

Let night come toll the hour

Days move on I remain

Love moves on like that current

Love moves on

      How slow life seems

And Hope how violent

Let night come toll the hour

Days move on I remain

Days pass on then the weeks pass on

Neither past times

   Nor loves shall come again

Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine

Let night come toll the hour

Days move on I remain

Guillaume Apollinaire, “Le Pont Mirabeau”

Translation by Jack Hayes

© 2017

Note: Most of the work on this translation dates back to circa 1990. Indeed, I have a translation of Apollinaire’s Alcools about two-thirds complete, & it’s been in the same state for some years. But I hope to complete it someday, as it is without question one of my favorite books of poetry—after my own pace slows to a more measured level & once we get the Chinese translations in shape.

The reason I’m posting this now is the poem has crept into my own current manuscript a few times, & after it made a rather conspicuous appearance in a recent poem (not yet posted on the blog), my friend & editor Sheila Graham-Smith asked about my translation, which she hadn’t seen—et voilà!

You can read Apollinaire’s heartbreakingly beautiful original here.

Image connects to its source on Wiki Commons:

Clément Maurice: “Paris en plein air”, BUC (Bibliothèque universelle en couleurs), 1897, Le Pont Mirabeau.

Public domain.