One of the joys of exploring poetry in languages not one’s own is to come across unexpected coincidences of thought and expression, as if underlying all disparity of tongues were some universal language of perception and empathy, a hidden wellspring that poets may sometimes tap into. I think it unlikely that in the case of these two tree poems either poet would have been acquainted with the other’s work, but surely both would have recognised a shared spiritual affinity.

The translation that follows the French is my own.

Tree at my Window

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.

Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.

But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.

That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Robert Frost

Regards

S’il n’était pas d’arbres à ma fenêtre
Pour venir voir jusqu’au profond de moi,
Depuis longtemps il aurait cessé d’être
Ce coeur offert à ses brûlantes lois.

Dans ce long saule ou ce cyprès profond
Qui me connaît et me plaint d’être au monde,
Mon moi posthume est là qui me regarde
Comprenant mal pourquoi je tarde et tarde.

Jules Supervielle

The Watchers

If it were not for trees outside my window
To come and gaze into the depths of me,
Then given up to its own ardent laws
This heart of mine would long have ceased to be.

In this tall willow, or in this deep cypress
Who grieve for me that still I do not go,
I see my own shade, waiting, looking on,
Not understanding why I tarry so.