Livre d'Or

Middle of last night, I couldn't sleep until I'd written down this verse. I've been trying to translate Verlaine's poem Clair de lune for about 20 years, and never got anywhere at all. This still isn't right, partly because it's too metrical and doesn't capture the very complex rhythms of the original. But much of my poetry suffers from being too metrical, too tum-te-tum.

( in which I commit poetry )

So a while back there was a meme for people to post anti-war songs. I thought that was a good meme, but at the time I didn't participate because I thought, I don't know any anti-war songs except really obvious ones like Universal Soldier and Blowing in the wind. I realized somewhat belatedly that I do in fact know the several Israeli anti-war songs, including the Song for Peace. I started composing a translation of it and found it was coming out with scansion. What I ended up with was not really a translation of the song as such, but a poem based on my (probably reliable) memory of my (almost certainly unreliable) transcription of the song. It's not really good enough for public but it's not bad enough to destroy and try to forget the memory of having written it, so here you go:

( if you wanted emo filk-y poetry there are probably better places for it )

It's so tempting right now to pray for peace. That would be the wrong thing to do for me personally, in my religious framework, if I don't also do something practical to make peace happen. I really don't know what though. Of course, it's far too easy to feel helpless to have any effect on distant foreign wars, but that feeling is worse right now, as a foreigner in a country where I have no contacts and don't know how these things work. Does anyone have any suggestions? Even something as simple as a charity I could donate to would be a good start.

And if you don't have any ideas about that, suggestions for improving the poemlet are also welcome. I'm particularly concerned about the line: All empty now are victory's joy / And songs of praise! because while it's obviously a plural statement grammatically, aesthetically it feels like it should be singlular. Any ideas?