Poems about Nature from 2009

In 2009, I seem to have written a few poems about nature. You can definitely sense the uneasiness in my writing at the time! Even though I had spent two years in America before coming to London, I wasn’t yet confident in english as I was in french. This definitely influenced the number of poems I wrote in french compared to english at the time, to the point I only wrote in english when I was forced to!

Here are two little poems written each on a coloured in leaf we were asked to make in primary school.

Goodbye Winter

When day slides to night

You can see Oh! so bright

Spring rushing along.

When autumn changes everything

When green turns to gold

The trees look old

The land is on fire

When comes a beautiful flyer.

It was a beautiful blue bird

But at the other side of the forest we heard

The sound of the town crier

It yelled Autumn!

Well Autumn is the season where

September, October, November are waiting

Gently waiting for spring.

La rose – The rose

C’est une chose

Toute rose

Toute rose

Toute rose

C’est une chose

Toute chose

Qui s’arrose

This poem is simply impossible to translate! The play words here is between the word “rose” and the words “chose”, thing in english, and “arrose”, which means watering. The poem uses the same kind of repetition as The Tissue Box, which makes it quite pleasant to read when overly pronouncing each syllable. As I mentioned in my first post on the collection -Time- this was a very experimental time for me, where I had fun in creating poems with very simple puns.

Le paquet de mouchoirs – The tissue box (2009)

Ce petit paquet contient

Quelque chose de bien

Car constance

Et Clémence

Sont enrhumées

Donc il faut tous les jours leur acheter

Un petit paquet qui contient

Quelque chose de bien

This little box includes

Something helpful

Since Constance

And Clémence

Are under a cold

So everyday it is necessary to buy them

A little paquet that includes

Something helpful

This poem was a lot harder to translate, as expressions that are cute and innocent in french don’t translate well literally in english. This meant that the nice little play on words in french was lost in translation. Not only that, but I was trying to keep the wording simple while maintaining the rhymes, which proved impossible as there seem to be no simple words for “good” (“bien” in french) and contains (“contient”).

I remember coming back from the square with my mum and two sisters, and having the need to blow my nose. While I was doing the deed, I formed this little poem in my head out of nowhere, and told it out loud, proudly. This realisation that a simple story as two people with a cold needing a tissue box could be made at least musically interesting (rhymes + repetition) was what made me realised that I had potential in writing poetry.

A warm welcome to Railway of Thoughts

I have been meaning to start a blog like this one for ages. The little courage and confidence I have in regards to my abilities had done a good job in hindering me from achieving any progress that would have brought me closer to that goal.

Or so I believed. For as long as nine years, I’ve had an unconscious insight to collect pieces of writing I spontaneously produced, in a small wine&cheese box and in journals. My mum, discovering this jewel in her eyes, had helped me built a collection of unpublished poems and quotes, which she enjoyed sending to some of my family members and two of my literature teachers. This was when I was 9. From then on, I was to face the overwhelming pressures of social and academic life which many of us must endure in order to grow stronger and experienced in the art of living in a society. As I grew older, the pressure built exponentially without my resilience alongside it, until the point where I snapped. In reality, I broke many times since then, these overwhelming moments of sadness leaving marks on my skin and memories at every checkpoint. When I opened up to people about these feelings, I came to realise how common they were. Everywhere around me, people were facing their own fears, their own pressure and their own responsibilities. Yet, as I looked deeper, I discovered a small group of people which operated similarly to the way I do. Every source had given them different names, more or less clearly defined or connotated negatively by society. It is these people who I hope to reach the most through my blog. Not because they are the ones who understand best where my thoughts are leading to, but because I am well placed to know how harsh life can be when it is perceived by a highly sensitive individual. Sensitivity in the sense of our biological senses. Emotions feel maximised, there are no built-in defences against stress and primitive fears, the mind is lost in a self-driving network of highspeed trains, ergo the name of this blog.

Thus, I hope to embark on this journey with you, as I go through the years of my life in poetry and prose. I will share some of my experiences, some of my work (I also take a few photographs), and some of my anxieties. You need not to worry about chronology, as this blog is designed for my readers to pick and choose what interest them and avoid what they would rather not read about.

Again, a warm welcome to Railway of Thoughts,

Yours Sincerely,

Little Owlegion

P.S. As it is clearly not apparent in the text above, I am a university student of science (biology and chemistry), young, French by nature and English by upbringing. You will thus see me reference papers and scientific findings (although I am not yet proficient in the practice, so please allow me to make mistake for the time being), and publish in both french and english. Bold font will indicate which text was the original of the two translated versions.

Le temps – Time

De Poèmes D’Hier, d’aujourd’hui et de demain – 2013
From Poems of yesterday, today and tomorrow – 2013

Le temps s’écroule
Dans un sablier
Soudain il devient un peu saoul
Après cette longue course à pied
Heureusement, le voila reposé!

Quand on verse le temps dans un sablier,
Il faut faire attention à ne pas l’épuiser!

Time crumples
Down an hourglass
Suddenly, he feels drunk
After long hours of walking
Fortunately, he can lie here mellowly!

When we empty time in an hourglass,
It becomes important not to weaken it!

 

This poem was part of the poem collection my mum and I had created when I was 13 years old. I never put a date to it, but I remember it being one of my first poems, from when I was still new to language and writing. It figures at the front of the collection and serves to introduce my writing style at the time. This is the first time I am reading it’s english version, and I must say, it’s not bad either!

I have a vivid memory of making the mistake of saying “le temps s’écroule” instead of “le temps s’écoule”, two similar sounding words, and my mom laughingly saying I was a poet. The sun softly shining through the veranda that linked our kitchen to our usually large living room, I began to gather words linked to the idea of a personified time, crumpling after walking long hours of walking. Only today do I realise the more abstract meaning behind these words.

In the hope you enjoyed reading it just as much as the 9-10 year old me enjoyed writing it,

Yours sincerely,

Little Owlegion