north-american possums! work fatigue grouses; singaporean; ex-poet and writer; former convent girl; converted, convicted and painfully quiet; bibliophilic; skyscrapers; weather-talk; dining alone on sashimi; your life with Jesus; banging heads with problems; looking from afar; loving my xiongmao; peanuts & anchovies; battlestar galatica; novella dreams and paranoai: holding onto you.

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Monday, April 26, 2004

ever since i picked up the anchor anthology of french poems from the national library, there has always been the growing interest in me to read more about baudelaire. well, yeah i know he's quite nutty. did he write something about the excellent benefits of opium and alcohol?

anyway, in line with this recent craze of mine, i am also reading stephane mallarme. feeling a slight pity with myself for not taking up the 20th century course. i know philips can and will wax so lyrically about mallarme which will be sooo interesting to me. anyway, here is the poem that i think is quite extraordinary. i love nature, scenary. little light bulbs in my heart were flashing as i read mallarme's stuff and found out that he likes the fall/autumn and sunsets. me too me too! hehe. gushing here..

SIGH
My soul, calm sister, ascends toward your brow
Where an autumn that's scattered with russet dreams now,
And toward your angelic eye's wandering heaven
Ascends, as in a melancholy garden
A white jet of water faithfully sighs
Toward October's pure, pale, and compassionate skies
That mirror in pools their infinite langour
And, on dead water where anguished leaves wander
Driven by wind, furrowing a hollow,
Let the sun be drawn out in a long ray of yellow.

the last and only full stop. the french version had an exclamation mark at approximately the end of fifth line and the dash at the sixth.. though if that's the case, it's strange. lots of things i've been up to anyway this week. will update when i get back. i'm at the national library orchard. i had a hair cut today. i don't look like a "wow" but i'm glad i did it. can't stand long hair and being/looking gu niang for so long..

posted by happyhannon at 5:20 PM