Charlotte Mew: A Quoi Bon Dire

Seventeen years ago you said
Something that sounded like Good-bye;
And everybody thinks that you are dead,
But I.

.

So I, as I grow stiff and cold
To this and that say Good-bye too;
And everybody sees that I am old
But you.

.

And one fine morning in a sunny lane
Some boy and girl will meet and kiss and swear
That nobody can love their way again
While over there
You will have smiled, I shall have tossed your hair.

Public Domain

Charlotte Mew (1869-1928) was a popular poet in her lifetime, and was admired by fellow poets Ezra Pound and Thomas Hardy, among others. ‘A Quoi Bon Dire’ was published in Charlotte Mew’s 1916 volume The Farmer’s Bride. The French title of this poem translates as ‘what good is there to say’. The reader might note that although the poem mentions a boy and girl kissing, Mew herself fell in love with a fellow writer, May Sinclair, though the love was not reciprocated.