BW23: Sunday Book Babble - Chanson d'Automne by Paul Verlaine

 

Courtesy of World Wide Media

It's Book week 23 in our 52 Books Quest and today is the 77th Anniversary of the D Day invasion when allied forces launched operation Overlord to free northwest Europe from Nazi occupation. 156,000 United States, British, and Canadian troops stormed five beaches that day in a large amphibious assault.   One historical tidbit is the French Resistance had been told the invasion would begin shortly after the first three lines in Paul Verlaine's Chanson d’Automne was read on BBC's Radio Londres in a real time radio broadcast 

 

Chanson d'Automne

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l’automne
Blessent mon coeur
D’une langueur
Monotone.

 Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l’heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure;

 Et je m’en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m’emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.

 

Autumn Song

translated by Arthur Symons

 When a sighing begins
In the violins
Of the autumn-song,
My heart is drowned
In the slow sound
Languorous and long

Pale as with pain,
Breath fails me when
The hours toll deep.
My thoughts recover
The days that are over,
And I weep.

 And I go
Where the winds know,
Broken and brief,
To and fro,
As the winds blow
A dead leaf.

 

We honor those soldiers who fought and died in service to our countries.

***************

Currently reading S.K. Dunstall's Stars Uncharted which is a quite fascinating space story so far: 

"Three people who are not who they claim to be:

Nika Rik Terri, body modder extraordinaire, has devoted her life to redesigning people's bodies right down to the molecular level. Give her a living body and a genemod machine, and she will turn out a work of art.

Josune Arriola is crew on the famous explorer ship the Hassim, whose memory banks contain records of unexplored worlds worth a fortune. But Josune and the rest of the crew are united in their single-minded pursuit of the most famous lost planet of all.

Hammond Roystan, the captain of the rival explorer ship, The Road, has many secrets. Some believe one of them is the key to finding the lost world."

We watched Blade Runner 2049 last night which was full of twists and turns and just when thought we'd figured it, out,  it twisted again. Slow moving dark film but it was really really good.