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Poetry Corner: Do you have any favourite poems? If so, share them here!
Thread poster: Paul Dixon
Dan Lucas
Dan Lucas  Identity Verified
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:44
Member (2014)
Japanese to English
One from my childhood also Sep 23, 2020

Helena Chavarria wrote:
Tarantella

A great rhythm and a stand-out poem.
Here's another, whose sentiment is quite topical given the events of this year.

Lochan (Kathleen Jamie)

When all this is over I mean
to travel north by the high

drove roads and cart tracks
probably in June,

with the gentle dog-roses
flourishing beside me, I mean

to find among the thousands
scattered in that land

a certain quiet lochan,
where water lilies rise

like small fat moons,
and tied among the reeds,

underneath a rowan,
a white boat waits.


expressisverbis
P.L.F. Persio
 
expressisverbis
expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 07:44
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Alfred de Musset (Tristesse / Sorrow) Sep 23, 2020

Reading these poems was a pleasant therapy for my mind and soul.
Just what I needed! Thanks


« Tristesse

J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie,
Et mes amis et ma gaieté;
J'ai perdu jusqu'à la fierté
Qui faisait croire à mon génie.

Quand j'ai connu la Vérité,
J'ai cru que c'était une amie ;
Quand je l'ai comprise et sentie,
J'en étais déjà
... See more
Reading these poems was a pleasant therapy for my mind and soul.
Just what I needed! Thanks


« Tristesse

J'ai perdu ma force et ma vie,
Et mes amis et ma gaieté;
J'ai perdu jusqu'à la fierté
Qui faisait croire à mon génie.

Quand j'ai connu la Vérité,
J'ai cru que c'était une amie ;
Quand je l'ai comprise et sentie,
J'en étais déjà dégoûté.

Et pourtant elle est éternelle,
Et ceux qui se sont passés d'elle
Ici-bas ont tout ignoré.

Dieu parle, il faut qu'on lui réponde.
Le seul bien qui me reste au monde
Est d'avoir quelquefois pleuré. »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3vmbHTW5lo


Translation in English:

"Sorrow

I lost my strength and my life,
My friends and my joy;
I lost till the pride
That made my genius believable.

When I knew Truth,
I thought she was a friend;
When I understood and felt her,
I was already disgusted by her.

Although, she is eternal,
And those who did without her
On this Earth didn’t understand anything.

God is speaking, we must answer him.
The only good I still have in this world
Is to have cried sometime."

http://www.frenchlanguageguide.com/culture/literaryfrench/tristesse.asp

Fausto Guedes Teixeira, a poet of the 19th century, from my second beloved city (Lamego) was strongly influenced by Alfred de Musset.
Only a few natives may know one of his famous poems "Amar e Odiar" (To Love and Hate).




[Edited at 2020-09-23 21:15 GMT]
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P.L.F. Persio
Mervyn Henderson (X)
 
expressisverbis
expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 07:44
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Galicio-Portuguese: Troubadour Poetry Sep 23, 2020

I'm sorry, this should be posted.


«CANTIGA D’AMIGO

– Ai flores, ai flores do verde pino,
se sabedes novas do meu amigo?
ai, Deus, e u é?

– Ai flores, ai flores do verde ramo,
se sabedes novas do meu amado?
ai, Deus, e u é?

Se sabedes novas do meu amigo,
aquel que mentiu do que pôs comigo?
ai, Deus, e u é?

Se sabedes novas do meu amado,
aque
... See more
I'm sorry, this should be posted.


«CANTIGA D’AMIGO

– Ai flores, ai flores do verde pino,
se sabedes novas do meu amigo?
ai, Deus, e u é?

– Ai flores, ai flores do verde ramo,
se sabedes novas do meu amado?
ai, Deus, e u é?

Se sabedes novas do meu amigo,
aquel que mentiu do que pôs comigo?
ai, Deus, e u é?

Se sabedes novas do meu amado,
aquel que mentiu do que mi á jurado?
ai, Deus, e u é?

– Vós me preguntades polo voss’ amigo?
E eu ben vos digo que é sã’ e vivo:
ai, Deus, e u é?

– Vós me preguntades polo voss’ amado?
E eu ben vos digo que é viv’ e são:
ai, Deus, e u é?

E eu ben vos digo que é sã’ e vivo
e seerá vosc’ant’ o prazo saido:
ai, Deus, e u é?

E eu ben vos digo que é viv’ e são
e seerá vosc’ant’ o prazo passado:
ai, Deus, e u é?»

D. Dinis (Denis of Portugal, the Poet King)


"SONG OF THE FLOWER OF THE GREEN PINE

Flower of the green pine, oh flower,
do you have news of my lover?
Oh God, and where is he?

Oh flower, flower of the green branch,
do you have news of my friend?
Oh God, and where is he?

Do you have news of my lover,
who has proved himself a liar?
Oh God, and where is he?

Do you have news of my friend,
who did not come when he said?
Oh God, and where is he?

You ask me about your lover?
I tell you he’s well, he’s coming.
Oh God, and where is he?

You ask me about your friend?
I tell you he’s coming, he’s well.
Oh God, and where is he?

I tell you he’s well, he’s coming,
he’ll keep his word - take comfort.
Oh God, and where is he?

I tell you he’s coming, he’s well,
he’ll be here - patience! - in a while.
Oh God, and where is he?"

Translation: 1995, Richard Zenith


The song in Galicio-Portuguese:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPJ61GqOfCA
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P.L.F. Persio
Mervyn Henderson (X)
 
Jean Dimitriadis
Jean Dimitriadis  Identity Verified
English to French
+ ...
Akritai Sep 26, 2020

Akritai*

Who will defend
our life’s frontiers when the time will come?

Reality will conquer us without a fight.

It’s time we took real action
against low fertility of dreams.

Maria Haralampidi

*term used in the Byzantine Empire to denote the army units guarding the Empire's eastern border.

Ακρίτες

Ποιοι θα υπερασπιστούν
τα σύνορα της ζω�
... See more
Akritai*

Who will defend
our life’s frontiers when the time will come?

Reality will conquer us without a fight.

It’s time we took real action
against low fertility of dreams.

Maria Haralampidi

*term used in the Byzantine Empire to denote the army units guarding the Empire's eastern border.

Ακρίτες

Ποιοι θα υπερασπιστούν
τα σύνορα της ζωής μας όταν χρειαστεί;

Θα μας κυριεύσει αμαχητί η πραγματικότητα.

Είναι καιρός πια να ληφθούν σοβαρά μέτρα
για την υπογεννητικότητα των ονείρων.

Μαρία Χαραλαμπίδη
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P.L.F. Persio
expressisverbis
Mervyn Henderson (X)
 
Jean Dimitriadis
Jean Dimitriadis  Identity Verified
English to French
+ ...
BLM Sep 26, 2020

HARLEM

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore—
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

LANGSTON HUGHES


P.L.F. Persio
expressisverbis
Mervyn Henderson (X)
 
P.L.F. Persio
P.L.F. Persio  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 08:44
Member (2010)
English to Italian
+ ...
Charles Bukowski Dec 10, 2020

Beasts Bounding Through Time
By Charles Bukowski

Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant goin
... See more
Beasts Bounding Through Time
By Charles Bukowski

Van Gogh writing his brother for paints
Hemingway testing his shotgun
Celine going broke as a doctor of medicine
the impossibility of being human
Villon expelled from Paris for being a thief
Faulkner drunk in the gutters of his town
the impossibility of being human
Burroughs killing his wife with a gun
Mailer stabbing his
the impossibility of being human
Maupassant going mad in a rowboat
Dostoyevsky lined up against a wall to be shot
Crane off the back of a boat into the propeller
the impossibility
Sylvia with her head in the oven like a baked potato
Harry Crosby leaping into that Black Sun
Lorca murdered in the road by Spanish troops
the impossibility
Artaud sitting on a madhouse bench
Chatterton drinking rat poison
Shakespeare a plagiarist
Beethoven with a horn stuck into his head against deafness
the impossibility the impossibility
Nietzsche gone totally mad
the impossibility of being human
all too human
this breathing
in and out
out and in
these punks
these cowards
these champions
these mad dogs of glory
moving this little bit of light toward us
impossibly.
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Jean Dimitriadis
Mervyn Henderson (X)
expressisverbis
Tom in London
 
P.L.F. Persio
P.L.F. Persio  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 08:44
Member (2010)
English to Italian
+ ...
The Men That Don't Fit In Dec 10, 2020

This poem was posted many years ago by an Australian fellow translator, but I don't remember exactly where.

The Men That Don't Fit In
by Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,... See more
This poem was posted many years ago by an Australian fellow translator, but I don't remember exactly where.

The Men That Don't Fit In
by Robert W. Service

There's a race of men that don't fit in
A race that can't stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.
They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain's crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they're always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.
They say: "Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!"
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.
And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life's been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.
Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;
He's a man who won't fit in.

[Edited at 2020-12-10 09:34 GMT]
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Mervyn Henderson (X)
expressisverbis
 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:44
Member (2008)
Italian to English
The greatest poem that has ever been written about London Dec 10, 2020

T. S. Eliot "The Waste Land"

Listen to it the whole way through! It is broken into different sections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rpFBSO65P4

And here's
... See more
T. S. Eliot "The Waste Land"

Listen to it the whole way through! It is broken into different sections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rpFBSO65P4

And here's the text:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47311/the-waste-land

[Edited at 2020-12-10 14:27 GMT]
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P.L.F. Persio
Mervyn Henderson (X)
 
Sadek_A
Sadek_A  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:44
English to Arabic
+ ...
A short poem by a Martian who speaks English Dec 10, 2020

about defiance in the face of malice.

plodding they say is the key
for intelligence has potential to bend knee
with an imagination rich as natural ghee
both served on a gold plate with a "bon appétit"
analysts, profilers, mindgamers, whatever they be
restlessly trying to break into thee
no good ever came from their recipe
and no one could ever shake this tree


 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 07:44
Member (2008)
Italian to English
Bloody depressing, Mate Dec 10, 2020

P.L.F.Persio wrote:

This poem was posted many years ago by an Australian fellow translator, but I don't remember exactly where.


Reminds me of this great John Huston film about a failed boxer who never made the big time and has come to the end of the road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y5mRRgDFlY


P.L.F. Persio
Mervyn Henderson (X)
 
P.L.F. Persio
P.L.F. Persio  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 08:44
Member (2010)
English to Italian
+ ...
As Beckett said: Fail, fail again, fail better Dec 10, 2020

Tom in London wrote:

Reminds me of this great John Huston film about a failed boxer who never made the big time and has come to the end of the road

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y5mRRgDFlY


I'm in two minds about about failing/making it, and so I turn to the higher authority of poetry. This time Boris Pasternak again, in a 1956 poem translated by his sister Lydia Pasternak Slater:

It is not seemly to be famous...

It is not seemly to be famous:
Celebrity does not exalt;
There is no need to hoard your writings
And to preserve them in a vault.

To give your all - this is creation,
And not - to deafen and eclipse.
How shameful, when you have no meaning,
To be on everybody's lips!

Try not to live as a pretender,
But so to manage your affairs
That you are loved by wide expanses,
And hear the call of future years.

Leave blanks in life, not in your papers,
And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.

Into obscurity retiring
Try your development to hide,
As autumn mist on early mornings
Conceals the dreaming countryside.

Another, step by step, will follow
The living imprint of your feet;
But you yourself must not distinguish
Your victory from your defeat.

And never for a single moment
Betray your credo or pretend,
But be alive — this only matters —
Alive and burning to the end.

Быть знаменитым некрасиво...

Быть знаменитым некрасиво.
Не это подымает ввысь.
Не надо заводить архива,
Над рукописями трястись.

Цель творчества — самоотдача,
А не шумиха, не успех.
Позорно, ничего не знача,
Быть притчей на устах у всех.

Но надо жить без самозванства,
Так жить, чтобы в конце концов
Привлечь к себе любовь пространства,
Услышать будущего зов.

И надо оставлять пробелы
В судьбе, а не среди бумаг,
Места и главы жизни целой
Отчеркивая на полях.

И окунаться в неизвестность,
И прятать в ней свой шаги,
Как прячется в тумане местность,
Когда в ней не видать ни зги.

Другие по живому следу
Пройдут твой путь за пядью пядь,
Но пораженья от победы
Ты сам не должен отличать.

И должен ни единой долькой
Не отступаться от лица,
Но быть живым, живым и только,
Живым и только до конца.


Mervyn Henderson (X)
expressisverbis
 
Sadek_A
Sadek_A  Identity Verified
Local time: 11:44
English to Arabic
+ ...
..... Dec 10, 2020

Tom in London wrote:
a failed boxer who never made the big time

The realistic question remains not whether others made the big time, but whether oneself did!
I hope everyone makes the big time, but sometimes crooked ways keep from that.


 
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 08:44
Spanish to English
+ ...
@Tom and @PLF Dec 10, 2020

"That corpse you planted last year in your garden ..." - quite impacting, that.

Plus, I used to sleep in a room just like Stacy Keach's in Fat City, but without the view. On the up side, I could get a lot more empty beer cans into my wastepaper basket before I couldn't be bothered to take it downstairs and empty it like he can't.


And the following caught my eye in Pasternak's:

And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters<
... See more
"That corpse you planted last year in your garden ..." - quite impacting, that.

Plus, I used to sleep in a room just like Stacy Keach's in Fat City, but without the view. On the up side, I could get a lot more empty beer cans into my wastepaper basket before I couldn't be bothered to take it downstairs and empty it like he can't.


And the following caught my eye in Pasternak's:

And do not ever hesitate
To pencil out whole chunks, whole chapters
Of your existence, of your fate.

There's a kind of undertone of Kipling's "If" running through parts of that one, I think.
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P.L.F. Persio
expressisverbis
 
Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member for the following reason: I'm afraid this post was reported as hurting some sensibilities due to its imagery of animal cruelty. Apologies for the inconvenience.
Mervyn Henderson (X)
Mervyn Henderson (X)  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 08:44
Spanish to English
+ ...
@Jan Dec 10, 2020

I must admit, Jan, when I saw your post I thought, "Here comes some Grand Auto Theft Violence Plus" rappa-gangsta poetry, considering your comments in the past about the games you translate and I think you have your doubts about. Seeing the "scissors" bit kind of confirmed that for a second or two, but then it develops into something rather different. Not Four and Twenty Blackbirds, but rather moving in its way.

I suppose we all have a moving childhood poem or song we know by heart.
... See more
I must admit, Jan, when I saw your post I thought, "Here comes some Grand Auto Theft Violence Plus" rappa-gangsta poetry, considering your comments in the past about the games you translate and I think you have your doubts about. Seeing the "scissors" bit kind of confirmed that for a second or two, but then it develops into something rather different. Not Four and Twenty Blackbirds, but rather moving in its way.

I suppose we all have a moving childhood poem or song we know by heart. I have a couple, but they're much too embarrassing!
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P.L.F. Persio
 
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