Cái điếu La pipe

Tôi là điếu một tác gia
Thấy tôi ám khói người ta tưởng rằng
Châu Phi tôi hẳn mới sang
Chủ tôi ắt cũng là trang...hút cừ

Khi lòng chứa chất sầu tư
Tôi như mái bếp toả mờ không gian
Nơi đang sửa soạn bữa ăn
Thợ cày đói bụng vừa tan buổi làm

Miệng tôi ngậm lửa đỏ lòm
Phun luồng uyển chuyển xanh lam chập chờn
Dịu dàng như mẹ ru con
Quyện hồn ông chủ, ru hồn lên mây

Tôi vê lá thuốc thơm cay
Để cho ông chủ ngất ngây cõi lòng
Và tôi cũng chữa cho ông
Khỏi bao mệt mỏi chất trong tâm hồn

The Pipe

I am the pipe of an author;
One sees by my color,
Abyssinian or Kaffir,
That my master's a great smoker.

When he is laden with sorrow,
I smoke like a cottage
Where they are preparing dinner
For the return of the ploughman.

I clasp and lull his soul
In the wavy blue web
That rises from my fiery mouth.

I give forth clouds of dittany
That warm his heart and cure
His mind of its fatigue.

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)




The Author's Pipe

I am an author's pipe. To see me
And my outlandish shape to heed,
You'd know my master was a dreamy
Inveterate smoker of the weed.

When be is loaded down with care,
I like a stove will smoke and burn
Wherein the supper they prepare
Against the labourer's return.

I nurse his spirit with my charm
Swaying it in a soft, uncertain,
And vaguely-moving azure curtain.

I roll a potent cloud of balm
To lull his spirit into rest
And cure the sorrows in his breast.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)




The Pipe

I am an author's pipe;
From examining my Abyssinian
Or Kaffir countenance, one sees
That my master is a great smoker.

When he is laden with sorrow,
I smoke like a cottage
When the cooking is being prepared
Against the laborer's return

I entwine and I cradle his soul
In the drifting, blue film
That climbs from my fiery mouth,

And I turn a powerful balm
Which charms his heart and heals
His spirit of fatigues.

— Geoffrey Wagner, Selected Poems of Charles Baudelaire (NY: Grove Press, 1974)